Students promised $15 lap top

Students promised $15 lap top

www.news.com.au

INDIA has unveiled plans to produce a laptop computer costing just $US10 ($15) to help improve the skills of millions of students across the country.

The laptops will be mass-produced as part of a Government-sponsored education scheme launched today in the southern city of Tirupati.

Details about the computer remained scarce, but Higher Education Secretary R.P. Agrawal said last week that it would be available within six months.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Fair enough! Can they do it? A laptop that cheap?

I'm not sure if the government is subsidising the price of the laptop's purchase price. It's clear that they're putting money into the R&D side of it.

It looks like India might be making a play to expand it's power on the world stage? Knowledge is power, or so someone once said.

www.news.com.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

Sweet, ATS gets more members soon

I wish the US cared about education as much as these guys.

Cool, Australia will have more doctors in no time.

Harsh, but fair.

In Australia Kevin Rudd was talking about giving the schools new laptops to help the students study. looks like another promise down the drain

Kudos to India for taking such a keen interest in the higher education of its children.

I remain baffled though as to how one can manage to produce such a system on such a tiny budget.
That has got to be one heck of an automated production line.

I think for 10 dollars, its not going to be very good.
But it might just be enough for learning stuff.
I doubt it would have very good graphics etc.
If they got there whole country walking around with laptops using wireless it would be great.People would be able to learn more faster.
But you aren't going to be able to do much web based things these days with a $10 laptop.
However if you think simply what some people learn from Wikipedia, if everyone had it available at the touch of there fingertips they would gain more knowledge.
Many people don't even know what it is.In western country's.
I think its a good idea and all country's should adopt it.
The problem you have though with everyone walking around with a connected laptop is, you will get certain people, who will try and pervert the flow of information to control people.
As they try to do now.

Originally posted by BorgHoffen
I think for 10 dollars, its not going to be very good.
But it might just be enough for learning stuff.

Something like 2G memory.

I doubt that it will be a machine built for running games. Still, even if it is a cheap way to connect to the internet and have basic Office/Publisher/Math/Graphing applications, it will be more than serviceable for students to use.

They wouldn't need a lot of physical memory to save work, if they can upload to a secure school server or other dedicated online memory bank.

I'll be interested to see how it goes. It's certainly a small step in the evolution of education if it comes off.

I was recently on a course called 'Gateway to Work', at a local training centre the Job Centre referred me to (God knows why, I'm more than qualifed)

Whilst there we had to do several 'projects', one of which was to plan a new business start-up. Me and a couple of other guys clubbed together to open a computer shop/internet cafe.

However, we found we had NO chance of competing with big national chain retailers - as machines that cost about £400 cost them less than £20 to produce. This information came from someone who has a close relative who works for PC World, and we got in touch with them via email. Obviously isn't public knowledge.

Thats how much of a scam computers actually are. Don't cost sod all to make if you buy enough of them.

I think it was a typo on the speech sheet, it was meant to say 5k rupees = $100.

Thats still a decent price, but way above the accessibility of the poorest members of society.

Information truly is power. I love seeing schemes like this, which make a real positive difference to the lives of the poor.

yah i doubt this is even a big deal if we knew the true cost they were made for i would bet your top of the line laptop is probably made for less than 100 dollars
and the video card is positively the most marked up of all the components

i mean it is still good news and anyone could easily afford one but the technology has been around for decades its about time they eased up on the profits

reply to post by dean007


Nope not as much as you think at the lower end.

Naturally Alienware has a markup of about 200% at least; Dell has a heafty profit margin too.

But measures like the OLPC initiative struggled to get the costs under $100 and they simply couldn't. The OLPC is non-profit, so that just proves that even at the lower end there are constraints of cost. I have no idea how the Indian govt plans on doing this... seems like a pipe dream to me.

well they do have quite a bit cheaper man hour costs maybe that makes the difference oh well more power to them if they can do it there is certainly a market for it or demand

maybe some of the parts are not brand new maybe older surplus parts that
are real cheap

they will probably have a harder time finding a half decent os to put on it lol

reply to post by dean007


Yeah haha. No wonder MS was so quiet about this... Windows costs more than that entire laptop. They're using Linux Redhat I think.

Would be a good venture to recycle old parts from computers thrown away in the developed world. I mean some RAM etc is perfectly usable, and gets landfilled instead of recycled into products like this. Recycling in this case is a win-win.

Subsidised cheap plastic rubbish that will end up in a toxic dump with swarms of poor kids trying to recycle the bits.

And I bet they won't come with Windows XP Pro!

I would be wary as to what software these would run and how these kids will have the information they imput into these things used.

Sounds like a "hook" to me.

That is a brilliant idea.

The price of electronics is kind of outrageous anyway. I for one like the Apple computers that go for ~$3000 that you can build yourself with the same technology, different brand name, for about ~$800-900.

Yes, I'm positive they can do it for $10 and it will function properly in every way a computer should. Will it run the newest coolest most awesomest PC game ever? No... why should it? Is that really what computers are MEANT for?

The components in the computer are going to be all the perfectly useful components that have fallen to the wayside because of the great chase to build computers that are bigger badder faster cooler. Single core processors, just enough RAM for core uses of the computer, bottom of the line graphics card, etc etc. These are computers for EDUCATION... not your average Americanized super gaming computer. Laugh and make fun all you want but the Indians are going to be more technologically inclined at the age of 15 than a CSE major will be in the United States!

They will connect to the world through the internet, they will be able to use word processing, they will be able to use spreadsheets, they will be able to use a calculator on the computer, etc etc etc. And they wonder in America why India is taking over all the technology oriented jobs. Before too long, once this new generation of Indians comes through, I wouldn't be surprised if EVERY technological job was outsourced to India. Say helloooo networking and remote assistance. Because they give two rats butts about education... while America gives two rats butts about escaping reality in any way they possibly can (television, youtube, video games, entertainment system, alcohol, eating addictions) etc etc

America is #1.... in NOTHING.

[edit on 3-2-2009 by ImaNutter]

Originally posted by 44soulslayer
I mean some RAM etc is perfectly usable, and gets landfilled instead of recycled into products like this. Recycling in this case is a win-win.

So what, you're going to put that old discarded 1066mhz stick into the old PII 233mhz computer?

I'm interested in seeing how this so-called laptop will turn out... I say so-called because I dont think it'll be much of a laptop, but a rather hideous thing that's about as technological as a modern budget phone (and about as slow). As usual the screen is the key... Somehow I doubt this is gonna be a high quality LED backlit 1200x800+ res panel.

[edit on 3-2-2009 by merka]

Amazing if it is true!

Surely it is possible?

Will our kids ever be able to get hold of them?

I think by"computer" you guys are looking at your desktops and saying"for $15 dollars?" Most likely these things will turn out to be some kind of cheap version of a Leap Frog type laptop using 20 year old technology. But even still, i highly doubt they can make them for $15.

But, I hope they can do it.

Of course it's not going to be a modern computer. It better not run windows XP pro, it's unnecessary. Their looking for Cheap effective useful computers not yesterdays top of the line computer with bloated software.

I guarantee it will run linux if they succeed. That way they can have a web browser/word processors and more ON something a bit more powerful then a cellphone.

I'm looking at this more of how useful can they make this with little power appose to how powerful will it be for so cheap.