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India Launches $35 Tablet
Many readers have submitted stories about a new $35 tablet computer released today in India. The Aakash (meaning sky) has been handed out to 500 students for an initial trial run, if successful a $60 commercial version will hit the shelves later this year. The Aakash computer runs Android 2.2 (Froyo), has a 7-inch touch screen, 256MB of RAM, 32GB expandable memory slot, two USB ports, and weighs in at only 350 grams.
So, will they outsource their tech support to America?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Hi,
I would like to provide a background for this. The tablets are an endevaour by the Indian Government to reach out to the farmers as a means of communication to advise them about crops and similar kind of work. It is NOT meant to compete on the market with other tablets for normal functionality. I guess, the most important function would be video streaming to show tutorial videos on how to handle crop and inject them with pesticides and such and may be stream other lectuers. To get a background on what kind of exercise is this and wonders its necessity, you might like to visit NPTEL where free lectures are made available by IIT faculty on various college courses (both undergraduate and postgraduate). Due to the population, it is very difficult to reach students and farmers individually so this is the type of "distance education".
For example, in this age also audio lectures are transmitted over radio for anyone to listen by the Indira Gandhi Open University for people who want to study on their own but cannot attend a college as there is probably none in the region they can try to reach.
As it may or may not be common knowledge, software patents per se, are not valid in India. You can patent your code, not your idea (which is pretty pointless). There are certain workarounds the legal system as usual is the case. But ideas and software algos are not patentable per se. So patent encumbered thing might not be a really big issue here. I don't know about resistive or capacitive touch screens though.
How successful it is we all are sceptical (due to corruption and all the issues). But this is the main idea behind it. If it succeeds we would be very happy.
Chinese factories turn out stuff like this all the time. I have traveled to the South Pacific and you can get a basic smart phone for $20--made in china. They won't sell in the western world for that because they can sell the same piece of junk for $120, or "bundle" it for $20 with a term contract. In most countires in Africa where average household expenditure is less than $300, cell phones are prolific--this certainly is not because people are spending a years worth of wages to buy a phone. Companies will charge what the market will bear.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
The OLPC cost $400 because you were buying two devices. the second device was your donation through the Give One Get One program. It was the only way you could buy them.
The reason the devices cost $200 each was because the OLPC suffered a bit of feature creep and bad pricing projections on components.
The idea was that volume sales would bring pricing down more closely to the $100 level. I will mention that both Microsoft and Intel tried their best to derail the project*
[*] - http://news.cnet.com/Negroponte-Windows-key-to-OLPC-philosophy/2100-1016_3-6215837.html
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Every actually priced a cell phone?
Mine cost $35 with no contract (its pay-as-you-go.)
You are paying a lot more than you think for that shiny toy, they just figured out you will swallow $200 up front and finance the rest over two years a lot better than $499 up front.
You are confusing "cell phone" with "smart phone" .. stop being an idiot. Smart phones are still a large minority both in the United States as well as globally.
It is because the TracPhone is crap
So yesterdays high-end feature-phones like the Motorola RAZR are crap now? You really are an idiot. You seem to have incorrectly conflated "Touch Screen" with "Quality" and that makes you stupid.
Someone mod me troll for calling this wanker out.
"His name was James Damore."