Waiting for the 100$ laptop

navinkurian2002

The one child one laptop had promised a 100$ laptop but now they say its will be close to 200$ . I dont know why the guys at IIT are not working on a project to make computers accessible to all indians?If they can get 50$ laptop there would be no stopping india!!
Again laptop.org is an american run organisation and all the money would be going out of india.

With a low budget laptop and a home grown wireless solutions like airjaldi (AirJaldi Mesh Route)
Everyone would have low/free internet access.
http://www.laptop.org/
http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php
http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/explore.php
http://laptopfoundation.org/participate/givemany.shtml
http://drupal.airjaldi.com/

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edwardseco

The promise & the reality. I think that a eunuch laptop may not do much without considerable infrastructure and almost certainly will never do anything for tha poor. Might make a neat toy for the middle class children though. Anyway the market is solving the problem far better than half baked activists. Laptops are routinely advertized in the 400-600 USD range now with decent capability. On Black Friday I saw full featured ones for 400. I have too many now and can't maintain them all so I passed on it..

navinkurian2002

Humm yeah you got a point here.With the dollar falling things sure are getting cheaper. A video camera costing 50k 4 months ago is not sold for 30 k woah . Thats is a 20k decrease .

Wow how many do you have?

Aishah

Early last year there was a lot of hype on TV about how a 10,000 rupee laptop was going to come out shortly. It was to be designed for Indian conditions - heat and dust I presume - and was to be made available for schools and private buying. What happened?? IIT was supposedly developing this one - I waited, meant to have been out 6 months later, but nothing eventuated. In the end I paid 33,000 rupees for Compaq Presario with 512 mb memory. But where did the dream go?? And why make these exciting announcements when they can't deliver?

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Nick-H

You'll be able to carry your $100 laptop around in your Rs.1 Lakh car!!!!!

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vir

There was a $229 laptop deal this black friday:

http://www.notebooks.com/2007/11/19/...s7403-for-229/

$229 USD is Rs 9084, less than 10,000. I think IIT can stop working on the 10K laptop project now.

Aishah

Amazing! Mine is also Intel Celeron M 420 whatever that means and if it was on Broadband would be much faster - I'm perfectly happy with it. This must be because of Duo coming in and taking over?

navinkurian2002

Yeah they need to work on the 50$ laptop


Talking about dreams .I wonder what happened to the much hyped simputer http://www.simputer.org/

70s-80s overlander

A photo of the laptop -- and the technical specifications -- can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1

India announced several months back that it was rejecting the project because "within about 2 years" India could produce a $10 laptop. Perhaps. Does anyone on IndiaMike plan on holding his/her breath waiting on this? ** A fair bit has been written on India's rejection of the MIT project, that was to have included a rural wireless network plus language translation; apparently huge stumbling blocks included that India wanted top-down control instead of allowing computer engineers freedom to be creative about implementation, and that India fronted some money when it felt it should get the project for free via corporate and foreign contributions. ** [You're right. I keep thinking about the Indian government's difficulty disseminating $10 toilets -- let alone laptop computers.]

Connectivity: 802.11b/g /s wireless LAN; 3 USB 2.0 ports; MMC/SD card slot.
Media: 1 GB flash memory.
Operating system: Fedora-based (Linux).
Input: Keyboard, Touchpad, Microphone, Camera.
Camera: built-in video camera (640×480; 30 FPS).
Power: NiMH or LiFePO4 battery removable pack.
CPU: AMD Geode LX700@0.8W + 5536.
Memory: 256 MB DRAM.
Display: dual-mode 19.1 cm/7.5" diagonal TFT LCD 1200×900.
Dimensions: 242mm × 228mm × 32mm.
Weight: LiFeP battery: 1.45KG; NiMH battery: 1.58KG.

saajan_20

atleast they are coming down with the dollar prices and in turn other currencies will also follow !!!! so the 100 $ laptop which u heard then is equivalent to 150 $ now !!

nycank

That 100USD laptop has quite a few features (I am made to believe) that a 1000USD laptop are unable to provide. For one, the display which is low wattage and yet adjust nicely to bright sunlight. And a few others that escape my mind (the article is at work and I'm at home)

shere

Asus have released their so called $100 laptop. 7" screen, no HDD, Linux. http://event.asus.com/eeepc/microsites/en/index.htm
Only problem it is not $100.

It is a nice small portable laptop. My only concern is the price. In the UK it is priced at around £200. When Dell have their special offers you can sometimes pick up a proper fully fledged laptop for £250 or so.

brownboy66

its a nice idea - but I wonder about the support, maintenance, repair, and training that would need to go with it. I worked for a couple of years on aid projects involving the provision of technology (power, transportation, communications, etc). The rule of thumb was that for every dollar you spent on the technology, you might spend 2-3 on all the associated services needed to put it in place, get it running, keep it running, and then fix it when it broke down (and it will break down).

For a start the laptop will only be useful if people are given training as to all the things that it can do. You can't just simply turn up one day a drop off a laptop and say - "go for your life". So a nationwide training programme would be needed. That in itself would be a huge job.

Secondly - looks like the device acts a lot like a "dumb terminal" - getting most of its functionality by connecting to a network - so I would guess that network will need to be set up and available pretty quickly.

thirdly - what happens when one of these things break? Who fixes it - and where does someone go to get it fixed?

I guess the project is still in its early days - and I like the ideas behind it - but I'm wondering whether or not there is a clear understanding of who the users are supposed to be, and what environment they live in.

shashank.aggarwal

BB has clarified a lot of things here...thanks for sharing your knowledge...

This is what I have been wondering since the thread started. In a country like India or any country for that matter, I am unable to see how a affordable computer would help in short term...

I understand all the utilities and benefits, but they won't be anything revolutionary if we consider the bigger picture...what do you feel about it ?

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Aishah

In addition to above comments - computers can only be used by literate people - and in India it will probably be only the schools of the privileged few who will be gaining the most benefit from this scheme. IF it ever does get off the ground. If they can't even get children in rural areas in Rajasthan, Bihar, UP etc. to use a pencil, how does the govt. expect these children to be computer literate??