India unveils $35 computer for students

[Elmore Furth]

Source: CNN

India has unveiled a $35 computer prototype as part of its program to provide connectivity to its students and teachers at affordable prices.

The ministry said the price would gradually fall to $10 a piece.

The country has announced plans to link up all its 250,000 village councils by 2012 in a bid to plug massive broadband divides between rural and urban communities as it emerges as one of the world's few growth markets.

"The aim is to reach such devices to the students of colleges and universities, and to provide these institutions a host of choices of low-cost access devices around Rs 1,500 ($35) or less in near future," the human resources ministry said at the launch of the computer.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/07/23/india.thirty.five.dollar.laptop/?hpt=T2

---

Wowl!

[girl gone mad]

1. Pretty cool.

It's Linux based and has a touch screen.

[Dogmudgeon]

17. Linux? That's Socialism!

(Posted with a PC running Ubuntu 9.10)

--d!

[boppers]

27. Luddite!

How can you contribute to the glorious revolution if you do not assist in debugging/improving Lucid Lynx!?

[Dogmudgeon]

29. My video card was smitten with the libcrypt bug

But once it's remedied, I'm gonna be Pretty In Purple!

Until then, I toil in the Fields of Python in the expectation of the Great Day of Liberation.

--d!
Free Speech. Free Beer. Repeat.

[boppers]

30. libcrypt(o?) video card bug?

Haven't heard about this one, care to share? All I found was some app (Google earth) errors, which could be remedied by some symlink juggling....

[Dogmudgeon]

31. Correction, "libgcrypt"

Linux users who install 10.04 (Livid Lunatic or Lysergic Leprechaun -- I can never keep those names straight) on a computer relying on a particular stepping of a chip Intel manufactured as part of GMA310 graphics subsystem (so they say) will be able to use it until the first time they turn the computer back on.

The computer will hang after loading the kernel and a part of the X server. When it stops, it shows one of three or four error messages, all about libgcrypt.

I have no idea what this has to do with cryptology, although a lot of computers use the graphics processor to speed up system crypto. My own use of crypto is limited to MD5, SHA1, and ROT13. (If I want to keep stuff secret, I put it on a USB stick and don't even plug it in until I need it.)

I never did get an adequate explanation for the bug, and it has taken up much bandwidth on the Ubuntu and general Linux fora since May 1st. I stopped tracking it some time ago, since it was cutting into pursuits I consider more productive, like arguing over political trivia, using my 500W computer system as an MP3 player, and surfing for porn.

Okay, I'm only joking about the porn.

I was a long-time Visual Basic developer who used to write infrastructure software for a pharma company owned and operated by Satan. Then I got sick for a while. Now, I'm re-training by learning Linux and Python, since my friends who still work at/for Microsoft are convinced that the company will soon crash in a manner similar to the rock that fell into what would become known as the Chichxulub basin 65 million years later. Whether I learn development on 9.10 or 10.04 is of no consequence. And I figure I might start on Python 3 sometime in Obama's next term.

On August 1, next weekend, the mid-distro upgrade will be released, informally called "Ubuntu 10.07". I'll check out the fora again to see if the bug has been squashed. If not, toujours gai.

--d!

[valerief]

2. Imagine the US doing that for its people. Bwahahahahahaha!!!!!

Not in this century.

[Buenaventura]

3. cool indeed! and kudos to india.

[McCamy Taylor]

4. And we are firing all our teachers. Who is going to be ahead in the end?

[Bette Noir]

8. They're going to eat us alive.

But that's okay. Providing cheap computers and free broadband would be... Socialist!

[dkf]

5. The cost of broadband is a worse problem than the cost of a computer.

And our cable providers cant compete with the speeds other countriee are getting. We are so behind.

[Lightning Count]

20. Forget broadband. Free high speed wireless has to become prevalent. nt

[totodeinhere]

34. You are not making any sense. High speed wireless IS a form of broadband. n/t

[JCMach1]

33. Most Indian cities are wired for 3G

I have a tough time even getting reception back home here in the good old US of A.

[Xithras]

37. Most poorer countries have great cell networks nowadays

In many poorer countries, telephones in rural and remote areas were virtually unheard of until this past decade. The cost of stringing and maintaining phone lines is high, and most of the third world rural poor didn't have the money to pay for telephone access.

Modern cellphones have changed the game. 15 years ago, connecting a rural African village to the Internet would have meant stringing a hundred miles of expensive copper cable, installing thousands of poles, placing routing boxes in the villages, stringing cables from house to house, running power to the village to power the whole thing, etc. Today, one cellphone tower with a PV array and a satellite dish can accomplish the same thing. 15 years ago it would have cost millions to connect a single remote village. Today it can be done for less than $100,000. Put up the tower, give the villagers cheap handsets, and be done with it.

The U.S. is "behind" because cellphones were seen as an accessory communications device until very recently, and were invested in accordingly. In third world areas, cellphones aren't just the PRIMARY communications network, they're often the only communications network, so they often receive a great deal of attention and investment.

[iamthebandfanman]

6. we have 35 dollar computers here too you know...

they are called calculators!

[mbperrin]

7. Imagine investing in actual infrastructure instead of bailing out

huge banks and other failed money grubbers!

Well, I can dream.

[valerief]

15. Oh, know, we invest in WAR. nt

[Dappleganger]

9. While it may sound good, the people (or children) making those computers

made dirt wages.

[girl gone mad]

23. To be fair, so do the ones making expensive computers.

[femrap]

10. I wish there were a simple

computer in the US that cost around $50....just offers email and surfing capabilities. Is there? That's all my mom wants.

[bergie321]

12. You can probably find

A 10 year old used computer that can do that. It won't be the fastest computer in the world but it should work fine for surfing and email. Check at places like Goodwill.

[Traveling_Home]

13. Here ya go

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=5210

Verizon offers a Samsung N150 Netbook for $19.99.

Internet access is $39.99 a month on a 2 year contract.

Capitalist Competition can be a great thing - sometimes

[femrap]

19. Thanks....

People at DU are smart and helpful!

[Fumesucker]

35. I bought a used computer for $85 the other day that would more than suffice for those things..

Dell with a Pentium 4 1.8 gHz, 512 mb ram, 80 gB hard drive..

I put it together with a $30 17" NEC LCD monitor I got from Craigslist and have a very nice looking setup for $120 including tax. I'm going to be using it to run a numerically controlled machine tool in my little home shop and I don't like putting anything expensive in that environment just to get it covered in nasty crud.

[immoderate]

11. Sent this to a friend who styles himself a libertarian

Hoping to make his head explode. :)

Not unprecedented. There was that $100 student computer started as an NGO with some corporate grants. Don't know where they are now. Maybe out for a drive in their Air Car.

With the government behind it, this may go.

--imm

[mbperrin]

16. One Laptop Per Child is going all around the globe. $199 laptops

with special screens for bright light viewing (outdoor schools), universal symbols and so on.

Here's their site:

http://laptop.org/en/vision/index.shtml

[immoderate]

21. Thanks.

Good. I think they have no presence in the US. So I don't get to see them.

--imm

[wickerwoman]

32. It's a US based non-profit

that came out of MIT Media Lab and is backed by ebay and google.

They developed cheap laptops which they sell to governments to distribute to schools (mostly in the Third World but they sold some to Birmingham, Alabama too.)

I used to work with some guys connected to the project and we got an early prototype to play with. It's a great idea but the laptops are supposed to be "unbreakable" and we managed it in about forty minutes :-(

[onehandle]

14. Adding to the irrelevance of America in the future. nt

[Lightning Count]

18. Does it have an app store? nt

[boppers]

28. Better.

From the writeups I've seen, it looks like they removed costs by taking out local computer storage... think of it as a touchscreen "terminal" (if you're old enough to remember those), with your OS, your applications, darned near everything stored, and running, and upgradeable, remotely....

[Vehl]

22. 35$ per student by the government seems to be a great investment

Given that without such subsidized products millions of Indian School kids might not be able to afford a computer or to browse the net.


This initiative(if it works out as planned) is a very smart thing to do...for any government...because the Best investment any country can make, is on education, because with an educated workforce this paltry sum spent on each child would pay dividends orders of magnitude larger.

[Vidar]

24. Oh, No! Now the US will have to make war on India to maintain Gates' & Dell's

ill-gotten gains.

[pipoman]

25. I wonder if customer support for India is Chinese...

it just wouldn't be right if one could actually understand the person on the other end of the line..

[fujiyama]

26. There would be a sense of irony in that certainly

Then again, the components used in these computers are sourced from around the world anyways. When you can build a product and sell it at such a low cost, obviously you were able to find some pretty cheap suppliers. Of course, being a government subsidized project (*GASP*), profit isn't the real motive, so we're not looking at paying $500, for a product which cost less than $300 to make.

[Xithras]

36. It's a low cost internet tablet. You can buy one of these today for about $175 in the US

The Sony Dash, the Nokia N810, the Archos 5...these devices, or devices like this, have been available for most of the past decade. U.S. consumers aren't really interested in using them.

Imagine an iPad without the ability to install apps, store music, or store content. It's just a screen with Internet access.

I would guess that the Indian government has hacked the cost through a combination of depowering (you can run one of these on the equivalent of a 386 if you don't care about video playback), reduced component quality (those look like low quality, low resolution TFT screens), reduced battery capacity (batteries are expensive but important in mobile markets like the U.S., but aren't as important in rural areas without much mobility), and probably a fair bit of IP dodging.

Even at $35, I doubt they'd sell many in the U.S.