Serious Doubt Cast over $35 Laptop from India

I am not strongly in favor of calling it a laptop. Instead, I think that it should fall into the category of tablet PC. Anyway, Jaimon Joseph has written an entry in the blog of IBN Live: Is India's $ 35 laptop really Indian?

Mr. Joseph has done quite a bit of research and has talked to several experts. If you read the entry then you will notice that he has cast a strong doubt whether the $35 laptop is really that much inexpensive. The main problem is that Indian government has not provided enough information about it.

The experts who are related to the project have not opened their mouths either. Thus, it is not sure whether the Indian government can really come out with a $35 tablet next year.

One thing is possible. The price will be more than $35 and Indian government will give some significant amount of subsidy to keep the price within $35. Of course, it has been already stated that mainly university students will get the tablet at the first phase.

If India can really come out with a $35 tablet then it will be the biggest revolution of recent IT history in the world. We have to wait another few months to see whether it really happens. 

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.