[Assam] WoW--the $ 10 Desi Laptop is Here!!!

[Chan Mahanta]

Hi A:

I don't know what it is.

But Googled it and found the following. As a 
friend, do you think I should still hold my 
breath ? It could kill me you know ?

Another thing: Considering the commentary below, 
MHRD probably should be what I was wondering it 
to be.

c-da :-)



$10 Indian Laptop a Lot of Hooey
It's not a laptop; it's some sort of cockamamie 
2GB UBS storage device whose price is more like 
$100

By: Maureen O'Gara
Feb. 5, 2009 06:30 AM

http://wireless.sys-con.com/node/831744

The billions of pixels spent in the last few days 
in feverish anticipation of the Indian government 
pulling off what was supposed to be a $10 laptop 
were spent for naught.
It's not a laptop; it's some sort of cockamamie 
2GB UBS storage device whose price is more like 
$100 (the government confesses to - whoops - a 
typo) that's being subsidized at $20-$30, and 
might make $10 with mass production's economies 
of scale in six months or so after the thing, the 
product of three year's work, is more refined.
It was reportedly unveiled - at a temple, or at 
least a temple town, so maybe India's Ministry of 
Human Resources Development (MHRD), evidently the 
responsible party, was hoping for a 
water-into-wine-style miracle - as some sort of 
ill-explained and perhaps ill-conceived 
electronic textbook that would require a computer 
to access.
The Times of India quotes a pained research 
scholar from Mahila University as saying after 
the event, "The entire world was watching. This 
act of MHRD has shamed the nation."
The paper said the Ministry's Joint Secretary NK 
Sinha "refused to comment as to why it was being 
projected as a laptop when it was not."
Gizmodo blames the fiasco on "deliberate 
misinformation by people close to the project, 
the complete and utter incompetence of the Indian 
tech pressŠand the condescending eagerness of 
Western news outlets to believe that such a 
product, which would have been dismissed as 
totally impossible if announced here, was 
inexplicably plausible because it was coming from 
the mysterious foreign land of India."
That's not to say there wasn't any skepticism ahead of the announcement.
A local blog wrote of the sight-unseen device, 
"If the government could pull off a 
near-impossible technological miracle, does it 
not imply that the entire global computer 
industry is either totally incompetent, or else 
it is a huge scam which produces stuff at very 
little cost and sells them at exorbitant prices."
And Ars Technical ultimately concluded that the 
only way the purported laptop could come in for 
10 bucks is if it's "really an abacus that 
connects to the Internet with the time-honored 
paper-cups-attached-with-string protocol."
Published Feb. 5, 2009- Reads 1,480
Copyright © 2009 SYS-CON Media. All Rights Reserved.





Related Stories
? India to Unveil $10 Laptop
About Maureen O'Gara
Maureen O'Gara is the Virtualization News Desk 
editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of 
famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of 
"Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One 
of the most respected technology reporters in the 
business, Maureen can be reached by email at 
maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, 
and by phone at 516 759-7025.










At 12:00 AM -0600 2/6/09, Alpana B. Sarangapani wrote:
Hi again, C'da:

So it's going to be an electronic reading device 
like Amazon's Kindle? That's not bad either, and 
just for Rs. 500 instead of $330 or more - the 
cost of a Kindle, it would be great. And if it 
indeed is a device like the Kindle, it would not 
need a computer or a cable. If it serves another 
purpose, like providing eJournals or ebooks, and 
not a complete lap-top, so what, and that too for 
Rs. 500?

In case, you were serious in asking about UGC and 
MHRD, don't they stand for University Grant 
Commission and Ministry of Human Resources 
Development that exist for educational 
development? I see a good connection of producing 
a device that they "ended up with" with these two 
agencies and did not see them doing anything 
"shameful" as the article suggested.

>desi-ingenuity has finally arrived on > the 
>scene, bearing $ 10.00 laptops for the > 
>deprived of the world. A mini tech-revolution > 
>flashed across my mind-screen.

So do not give your hopes up yet!

:)