大象传媒

Netbooks are definitely headed sub $100. Screens will move away from LED to lithographic methods that are very cheap to produce. The Atom processor will get cheaper but ARM chips are getting more powerful, either way processing power won't cost much. RAM is cheap and getting cheaper and you can use cheap Flash memory instead of a hard disk.
Netbooks are currently the fastest growing area of computing. As prices drop this will snowball till they become as ubiquitous as mobile phones already are.

It is not just the hardware, the massive growth of Moodle, in many languages, make true online learning an increasing reality.

It looks to be a very interesting initiative. Something along the lines of a netbook could prove an important boost to literacy and give cheap access to very important educational resources.
One word of warning: if the device, when it finally appears, is too powerful, the Indian Government will find it has simply given a whole generation access to the possibilities of online gaming. I have students who freely admit to spending 30-40 hours a week playing on laptops made available to them (at a discount) by the school.
I know it makes me sound my age, but it's astonishing how dull, isolated, ill-informed, illiterate, unmotivated, incurious and generally zombie-like an apparently privileged child can be...

Not like the 大象传媒 to fall for fairy stories. ;-)

To good to be true, then it probably is....

I must admit I expected a laptop watch or something....

Yeah what happened?
Isnt the media is jumping guns on any news?
News Hungry reporters and media are the spoil sport for good and worst news... similar this time too.
There was no govt. offical making a statment; one new paper thinks (out of blue) that its a revolutionary idea (and without going into tech specs) and they put it down and dumwits news agencies follow-suit...

I am laughting to see how media can be so lame...

I remember this article about the cheap laptop very clearly as I actually forwarded it on to further people to read.

It quite surprised me to read that if this was do-able in India so what have the Japanese and Chinese techies been doing all this time.

However, not to go off track from the main topic. It might actually be cheap to manufacture something that is priced at $20/- but there will still be alot of costs associated to implement such technology for educational purposes. What the Indian government has failed to outline is that what basic web-sites is it plannig to host for the pupils to access.

Having a hand-held or a laptop will not necessarily result in the learning of anything for anyone unless there is a proper channel for them to follow this through.

When i came across the news for the first time and the later reports on the product i remembered a story reported by some of the newspapers a few years ago telling that a boy of 8 years old made an Operating System for a computer and the product is equal or better and faster than Windows. Anyone who knew the processes an Operating System used to take care of laughed away the news.

Reading the news i was wondering what are they going to produce for a price of 10$ to 20$ when the product should carry a minimum set of components and interfaces that are expensive in the open market. But when i read about the government sponsorship and and later saw the picture in 大象传媒 NEWS on 3rd February i got curious and was waiting to see what is going to happen.

Now i am just wondering of the whole story was the imagination of the reporter? Did the development team or the sponsors ever claimed that they are going to build a Laptop? I was imagining that it should be supporting a web browser so that applications all web applications will work on the system. I could not imagine another cheaper way of bringing in useful information on the device useful for students.

But finally there was nothing presentable. Even to appreciate the basic works done on the system we need more information. I strongly feel that someone made a big mistake.

Waiting to hear more on this.

Regards
Crowly Mathew, Kerala, India
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I think laptop is a wrong word. This is more like desk-top/net-top/nano-top without screen and keyboard. hope it has processor, otherwise $30 is too-high for wi-fi modem.

"and compared the $20 laptop to India's $2000 car - although that too has so far failed to appear, some years after it was promised."

Mr jones i think u have to take realities into effect very seriously the tata nano car's prototype was indeed completed and presented at the delhi's auto show check out this link from 大象传媒 itself

Rory:
I think that the 20 US Dollar laptop idea, went away, to be reform and look-at again.

~Dennis Junior~

I actually think $20 laptop/mobile computer is a possibility. The cost of materials in a computer is small, the real expense is in the intellectual property and R&D costs.

(Checking wikipedia and Tata on the Nano, production is scheduled in two centres this year, but there is uncertainty, probably due mainly to the worldwide economic crisis.)

Rory: is that really 1,500 universities in 6 years? A staggering number. I cannot imagine how any nation could meet that demand.

India needs innovative uses of IT to solve such an enormous challenge in education. If not this product, then others.

Isn't this yet another example of maths-challenged journalists reporting on technical subjects of which they have not the slightest clue? The public has been mightily misled by such nonsense over the past decade.

World shouldnt be afraid about the developments being made in India. Its in everybodies interest people from every part of country are visiting India for jobs coz deres a recession going on in western part of world with a very little effect on India so ur welcomed, but with a good attitude.

It looks as if the Indians have something to produce, but not a laptop and very probably not that cheap, though they seem to hope that mass production will bring costs down. It seems to be intended for distribution to schools, not for general sale.

What they appear to have is a very small (5" x 10" screen) hand-held device with Flash memory, pre-loaded e-books and some web connectivity that will also enable access to an e-learning portal - Sakshat - that's also being developed.
Essentially it consists of a Flash hard drive plus a screen, keyboard, touch-pad, WiFi connectivity and presumably an (Indian) OS and applications such as a PDF reader, browser, text editor.

Indian technology lags behind that of Japan, America and Europe. This device is embryonic R and D, but its real significance may be that India is developing indigenous skills rather than buying in technology from aboard.

20 Dollars BC? [that's Before Creditcrunch]
Nowadays $20 will probably get you the plastic wrapping to transport it in...

Anyway, India. Things are pretty cheap out there, and internet speeds are reasonable in the cities, so a hand-held device with little memory but powerful enough to connect to the web will probably be their aim.

However, those with good jobs will probably not need it/have something already, and for those without it will remain, sadly, a distant dream...

You have all lost your brains? A twenty dollar laptop that may become $10?!? Even the Linux operating system costs more than this!

This is so preposterous that my head explodes every time someone asks me with a knowing gleam of idiocy in their eyes "hey, did you hear they are producing a $20 laptop?" - I respond "did you know the sun revolves around the earth?" and with a similar serious intent they say "yes".

I can understand why some journalists are upset as ANY Journalist that fell for this garbage means they have zero understanding of the IT industry, knowledge of business realities and common sense and therefore should have less job security than yesterday. We all can only hope....

The only way it could be $20s is if it's subsidised by the Govt.
As for the announcement, bear in mind there are elections coming up: ya know - politicians!

A sobering fact is that around half of India's population in aged 25yrs or under, but only 1% have access to formal education and the best tech graduates all get head-hunted away from India by overseas companies.

India seriously lags behind its main rival, China, in technology, education and internet connectivity. It's going to take more than laptops, be they sold at $100 or $20, to tackle these problems.
Building the infrastructure for greater connectivity and wider access to education in such a large country is a bigger challenge.

if 70% of the country still live on around a dollar a day, even a $20 lapnetbooktablettop will still be a stretch. I certainly couldnt afford 20 days of my pay to buy something (that i assume to someone on a dollar a day) would be a massive extravagance, considering food and clean water is probably their greatest concern.

Archos did a PMA a few years back with linux on it, i though it was excellent. i bet they could easy beat the olpc with that if they minus'd the hdd and when with cheap flash