$10 laptop from India – a sci-fi story?
Posted by Srinath
You've read it everywhere, in everyplace. Supposedly sporting 2gb of ram, and is wi-fi enabled. That's pretty much all the information that is being given out right now. Touted as India's response to the OLPC plan, it being developed by the Human Resource Ministry, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and Indian Institute of Science. It is meant strictly for students, and will be distributed directly by the government through schools, and colleges.
The question is - how true is the cost projection? I'm a big fan of such initiatives, but common sense prevails and its pretty damn clear that this is unrealistic. MIT's OLPC was projected at about $100, but finally ended up being priced upto $190. In short, I believe the Indian government is trying to pull off another cheap publicity stunt. Unless the exchange rate of the US Dollar goes upto Rs.1ooo, I don't see this happening.
But then again, the initiative will be heavily subsidised by the government to make it as cheap as possible. But will they take upto 90% of the price remains to be seen. I'm sure in the current financial position, they simply cannot and will not do so.
Until further details - this simply isn't going to happen.
UPDATE: Yea, its a total flop show. The device is actually some sort of external storage, not a laptop. More here