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Low-Cost Indian Tablet Project Falls To Corruption

symbolset writes "The first Aakash tablet proposed for India schools has failed. Datawind managed to deliver the $45 Android tablet as reported here previously, but suffering a breach in faith by both their contract manufacturer and the accepting agency in India had to put the project on hold. Facing a loss in revenue it's turning into a disaster for the small Canadian company as they are now proving unable to deliver both the Aakash tablet and the parallel retail product. Senior executives have begun to flee. The company has presold a great many tablets, and delivery failure reports are beginning to mount. Is this the Phantom console of this decade?"

3 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Money first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wtf does Google have anything to do with manufacturing and government requirements issues? Android is software, all the problem are hardware. If you are gonna blindly bash Google, at least keep it relevant unless this is an attempt to troll.

    For those of you who are to lazy to RTFA.

    1) Government wants $45 laptop to have military grade ruggedness (of which was not stated until late into the game). Quote from the article, ' The criteria included being able to withstand four inches of rain, enduring shock tests when “mounted in a vehicle,” and when subject to “sudden acceleration, braking, or turning while transporting the units.” ' Normally I wouldn't consider this that bad but for a $45 laptop, I can definitely see an issue.

    2) The manufacturer "signed an agreement with I.I.T. Rajasthan to manufacture what Mr. Tuli said he believes is a rival low-cost tablet." This side seems to be a mess of Corporate political issues. You can read the article for more on this yourself.

  2. Re:Money first by HornWumpus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hate to tell you. Linux doesn't have a microkernel. Hardware/driver failures crash the system (Kernel panic).

    Correct attribution of failures is a major feature of microkernels.

    That said hybrid kernels (including windows) do OK except the components that run in kernel (mostly video). Blue screens are much less frequent then they used to be.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  3. Re:Nice try by thsths · · Score: 5, Informative

    > If you want to pay for quality, you can get a quality Android device.

    It is more like: if you pay for quality, you *may* get a quality Android device, but you wont know until much later. Some manufacturers promise support and upgrades, but never deliver. In fact none of the Android manufacturers delivers consistently decent (not even outstanding) support.