Friday, July 23, 2010

India Introduces $35 Laptop

Indian government has introduced world’s cheapest laptop with a price tag of $35. Aimed at the students, the laptop would be coming to the students of higher studies from 2011 in India.

This computing device with touchscreen functionality looks like Apple iPad or a tablet PC, but would be available at a minimal cost. Kapil Sibal, the minister of India's Human Resource Development, has recently unveiled the prototype of the laptop in New Delhi, the capital city of India.

Mr. Sibal said to the media, “We have reached a [developmental] stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything.”

The prototype of the $35-laptop was developed at the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science by a group of researchers. Now, Indian government is in search of manufacturers for the mass production of the device.

The laptop, run on Linux operating system, can be used for work processing, web browsing, video conferencing and can take charge through solar power too. It also features PDF reader too.

MIT professor Nicholas Negropont came up with the idea of introducing a $100 laptop in 2005 and launched a project titled ‘One Laptop Per Chil’ which was aimed at providing a laptop to each school children of the developing countries by 2015. After that Intel also brought out an ultra low-cost computing device designed for the student.

Now, Indian government is also trying to bring the blessings of technology to the students across the country. Government’s ultimate goal is to lower the price to $10 which could be possible by reducing the unit cost.

Indian government allocates 3% of its total annual budget for school education and the literacy rate in the country has been increased too. However, still students in some rural areas can not even have minimal opportunity of education. Electricity has not reached in many remote areas.

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