India has come up with the world's cheapest "laptop," a touch-screen computing device that costs $35.
India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal this week unveiled the low-cost computing device that is designed for students, saying his department had started talks with global manufacturers to start mass production.
"We have reached a (developmental) stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything," he told a news conference.
He said the touchscreen gadget was packed with Internet browsers, PDF reader and video conferencing facilities but its hardware was created with sufficient flexibility to incorporate new components according to user requirement.
Sibal said the Linux based computing device was expected to be introduced to higher education institutions from 2011 but the aim was to drop the price further to $20 and ultimately to $10.
The device was developed by research teams at India's premier technological institutes, the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science.
India spends about three percent of its annual budget on school education and has improved its literacy rates to over 64 percent of its 1.2 billion population but studies have shown many students can barely read or write and most state-run schools have inadequate facilities.
via India develops world's cheapest laptop at $35 | Reuters.
I need one of these with a serial or USB port for data collection from the magnetic strip on the back of cards ... Video here.
3 comments:
Wow, nice info, I hope that laptops can sell at my country. Very very cheap laptop
So, what happened to the $100 computer some guy in England invented only a couple of years ago or so? Is this computer going to suffering the same fate?
Ann, they've got 'em right now if the consumers hadn't started buying them up at $300. Anything tech is like that. What it costs to make has nothing (or almost nothing) to do with how much they sell it for. "How much they can get for it" is what determines how much a consumer will pay. Doesn't matter if it was $50 parts and labor, it's $200 or $300 if someone will buy it that way.
Post a Comment