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India's "$10 Laptop" To Cost $100 After All
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jul 30, 2008 05:22 PM
from the ain't-it-the-way-of-things dept.
from the ain't-it-the-way-of-things dept.
narramissic writes "In case you missed it, India's Minister of State for Higher Education yesterday announced the development of a $10 laptop that will target higher education applications. There were no specifications given for the laptop and the rock-bottom price raised questions about government subsidies. Today, the figure was corrected: It's not a $10 laptop; it's a $100 laptop. Still no specs though."
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Give it a day... (Score:5, Funny)
They'll have it up to $1000.
Pesky decimal points....
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Re:Give it a day... (Score:4, Funny)
Did they calculate their costs with a Pentium II?
Parent
Re:Give it a day... (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, it was calculated by Verizon [slashdot.org].
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually it was the Pentium Pro line from 60 to 100 MHz. I don't feel bad. You didn't remember correctly either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug [wikipedia.org]
I did remember it being the 66 MHz FSB P6 core, which I mistakenly remembered as being early P2's. They were actually Pentium Pro's.
Re:Give it a day... (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, wasn't there a similar indian initiative that never really caught on? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simputer [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Simputer was not a bad product at all. It lacked the right kind of support by the government and other institutions when the promoters of the product needed it. At a time when Indian IT was largely riding on software skills, outsourcing and bodyshopping some young professors of the Indian Institute of Science came up with the bold idea of making a low-cost handheld computing device. Things did not work out for no fault of theirs. India missed a great opportunity.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed, wasn't there a similar indian initiative that never really caught on?
http://www.amidasimputer.com/ [amidasimputer.com]
It looks like it did catch on. Just that it looks like a PDA to us. I wish the folks that make the barbie laptop would just license that, stick a barbie case on it, and sell it in the toy department here. There would need to be a hotwheels model too, but then I could get one for each of the kids.
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In before... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In before... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Sheesh... (Score:5, Funny)
It's only $99 (Score:2, Funny)
If you're willing to use non-buggy CPU that sometimes moves the decimal.
Common sense (Score:2, Funny)
You don't need to read the label on a $0.35 chocolate bar to figure out it's made of 3% chocolate, 60% fat, 20% lecithin, and 27% wrapping.
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Duh.
Willy Wonka math.
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Maybe it's just an overlap. ie. the 27% wrapping also happens to contain 10% of the over-all fat content... To get the full caloric values listed on the label, you have to eat the wrapper.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> I'd definitely pay more than 35 cents for a candy bar whose ingredients totalled 110% of its contents, just to find out how that was possible.
Actually, just today while shopping I noticed a sausage with the following label (paraphrasing as I'm too lazy to go downstairs to check): "100 kg of this product contains 160 kg of pork, 20 kg of beef, spices, ...".
In addition to some sort of reverse synergy magick of the ingredients, they also for some reason decided to show that for a 100 kg, instead of 100g o
$10? $100? Both are shocking prices.. (Score:5, Funny)
With the way the US economy is going... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:With the way the US economy is going... (Score:5, Funny)
hopefully the users of this laptop will have to call and talk to someone with a thick, indecipherable American accent to get tech support. Fair is fair.
Parent
I still think $10 would be possible. (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if this story began as a typo, I don't think a $10 laptop is a pie in the sky.
The key here is to rethink our expectations for a laptop versus what the developing world actually needs. The OLPC, for example, is a beautiful machine, but its capabilities are honestly far beyond a baseline which would still make a huge impact on schoolkids living in poverty.
Imagine something like the following:
- Reflective, passive-matrix black and white screen
- Low-end (ARM9-based?) system on a chip
- 256 meg flash-based hard drive
- Custom, miniscule Linux distro consisting mostly of a web browser
- Big, old-style NiCd batteries
- 1995-style trackball
- Wired network adapter; USB host with optional wi-fi addon
With some creative engineering, I could imagine this sort of system getting down to the $tens, and with the kind of mass production you'd need to get this to many millions of kids, I think an ultimate $10 pricetag is completely doable.
Of course, I'm not actually a product engineer, so perhaps a real one could tighten up my specs (or dash my unrealistic idealism on the rocks).
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
doubtful. Typically, stuff don't much cheaper when you get much below the mainstream stuff.
Phones - The Real Killer App for the 3rd World (Score:3, Informative)
If we distributed a whole bunch of OpenMoko phones and a whole bunch (but not necessarily quite as many) OpenMoko development machines, this would accomplish what OLPC was trying to do.
Mobile Phones and SMS TXT services are already transforming large portions of Africa. Mobile phone infrastructure is a lot faster to set up and a lot less vulnerable to looting than wired infrastructure. It's a lot more scalable than the OLPC mesh networking -- after all the owners are economically motivated to expand it.
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Wired's "Free" issue a while back was talking how laptop's could easily be free, in the way that a $200 cell phone is free by tying it to a contract.
In the US a few years back, Microsoft gave you $400 if you signed up for a three-year MSN contract.
$400 can buy a cheap laptop.
So a free laptop is just one marketing promotion away.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Some people are already doing that. Like Royal Bank [rbcroyalbank.com]
Re: (Score:2)
You're confused. You gave me an informative link, and I'm all out of pithy comments.
However, I just tried putting this in my signature, but it was sadly truncated.
-------
In Soviet Russia, our new naked Natalie Portman and grits-powered Linux overlords welcome you, for one. To which CmdrTaco replied, "you must be new here." I didn't RTFA, but I heard that CmdrTaco is just a Twitter sock-puppet. ??? Profit!
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So a free laptop is just one marketing promotion away.
The "free" laptop is already here [pcworld.co.uk]. As you suggest it's a marketing promotion and you have to spend a lot of money to get your "free" laptop.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you rented it, they'd ask for the phone back and you could just leave. However you purchase the item. No one else claims to own it. You however must carry a service contract.
You ask if those "scams" still exist, and I point to the entire cell phone industry.
Re:I still think $10 would be possible. (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you are still in doubt: Take a look at the RAM prices. This industry currently has to cope with negative margins in many areas, which means that you are paying less than it costs them to produce it. Still I couldn't find anyone selling 256 megs for less than $5.
The computer I bought in 1993 might feature a market price below $10, but that doesn't mean that the production costs were anywhere near that line.
Parent
Re:I still think $10 would be possible. (Score:4, Informative)
"I'm neither a product engineer, but I highly doubt that there is any way to produce anything resembling a laptop below around $90."
yeah there is. first off, you're ignoring one important thing. a computer really only needs an 8-bit processor. 8-bit processors use very low amounts of ram, because of their word length. 64k is often the total ram of a powerful 8-bit microprocessor.
zilog processors can sell for as little as $1. you said there is no way no how a processor can cost $1, yet basic 8-bit zilog processors cost as little as $1 and for that you get a healthy 20 mhz, over 5 times faster than the colecovision adam home computer (z-80 at 3.8 mhz).
they even sell a 50-mhz 8 bit processor, but 20 mhz is plenty fast.
i don't know about intel or motorolla, but zilog still sells a wide line of 8-bit 16-bit and 32-bit microprocessors, including a low power Zilog that can run on as little as 2 volts. if that's not enough for you they sell an 8-bit chip with tcp/ip that can generate http web pages, eg: for web control interfaces for a microcomputer..
"eZ80® is revolutionizing the high-performance microprocessor market for today's 8-bit embedded applications. The eZ80® can operate at speeds up to 50MHz and address 16MB without a Memory Management Unit. This family supports demanding TCP/IP networking applications, featuring an Embedded Internet protocol stack that enables the transmission of HTML form data and the dynamic generation of web pages, and supports additional higher-level networking functions such as email and SNMP."
i don't know what an ez80 chip costs, but your 'everything must cost $30' assumption assumes a lot of things. how would an 'electronic controlled' thermostat cost $30 if the microprocessor couldn't be reduced below $30? the simple fact is, yeah it can be, and you don't need to make a zilog on 45 nanometer dies to get great price/performance ratios..
also, the Z-80 product line is virtually unchanged since the 1970's
that makes implementing z-80 products extremely cheap, since you don't have to design new code if you already have access to old code that was designed for z-80s.
and before you say 'but you could never get windows on an 8-bit cpu' remember that the NES was a z-80 derived product. you can have a simple, streamlined 8-bit OS and gui, that works just fine without all the HZ, and does just what you need... you could get a $10 laptop, if you really were willing to restrict it to all 8-bit software and the inherent limitations.
Parent
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I would settle for a $100 ebook reader that I could see in daylight
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Nicad batteries are bad, and involve heavy metals.
lithium ion/lithium polymer rechargeable are great for 2 reasons. 1. lithium is non toxic to humans 2. lithium is recyclable.
lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries are going to be everywhere we're going to mass produce the hell out of them, and hopefully people with bother to recycle them, because recycling them doesn't involve getting rid of toxic waste. Lead acid recycling takes mammoth sale deposits that force people to recycle them.
gameboys never cam
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100$ Laptop (Score:5, Funny)
Optional accessories:
- LCD screen : 150$
- CPU : 100$
- 512 Mb RAM : 50$
- Battery : 100$
- AC Power adapter : 80$
etc.
There are things money can't buy, but for laptops accessories, there's mastercard.
But yeah... I guess the laptop could be 100$ itself.
Back to the good ol' times where GM sold there cars with "wheels" and "Steering wheel" as an option.
Re:100$ Laptop (Score:5, Funny)
Here cars are way better than there cars. In a here car, you get in and then somebody says "We're here". In a there car, you get in and then somebody says "Are we there?".
Parent
$100 is less than OLPC (Score:5, Interesting)
and if they stick with the same technical specifications long enough It will get down to $10.
I remember before intel was the king of CPUs that there was the Z-80, and by the mid-90's Z-80 embedded systems (like the franklin bookman electronic dictionaries) were selling for around $40, with a hangman cartridge on flash memory.. the big cost, back then was the flash memory, and sadly Franklin moved away from the command line/text interfaces to go with more costly fancier displays, etc. only to go to more simple displays again, and 'text to speech' processors...
here's the thing though, by the mid 90's the Z-80 microprocessor was so energy efficient that you could literally run it off 2 cr2022 lithium batteries, and while i didn't use the dictionary every day, it took 13 years for my batteries to fail, to be honest though i used it more for hangman than for a dictionary.
if i used it daily, it would still last a long time, though, especially since it saves where you are in the dictionary so you can turn it off, then when you turn it on again it's in the same place. very easy to use, and nice.
the reason why i know it's a Z-80 is because i took the dictionary apart to look at it once. they do have cheaper non speaking dictionaries today, as well. http://www.franklin.com/estore/dictionary/TG-450/ [franklin.com] like that one (12 language translation! for $40) for whatever reason the language translating models cost the same as the basic english models, and they have a wide array of 'high end' speaking dictionaries, including ones with mp3 playback, and ebook reading features...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all $40 in the '90's are not $40 as of today.
Secondly it's not like the manufacturing cost gets cheaper just because time passes. If you start building them the way they used to be you have to take way higher energy and material costs into account (even in China it's not like electricity is so much cheaper that you will make a bargain). You could use newer technology and put them on smaller dies, but that would cost you as well. There
Re: (Score:2)
I they used the same Z80 as the original GameBoy, you get nearly 1024 opcodes. If that seems a bit backward (when looked from a RISC point of view), imagine being able to set or test register bits with only 2 opcodes, without messing around with other registers.
There was probably other nifty things it could do, but I can't remember as I haven't done GB-Z80 assembly in over a decade.
Offshoring? (Score:2, Insightful)
From TFA:
"A low-cost laptop being developed by the Indian government in tandem with two leading Indian education and research institutions will cost US$100 when available, and not $10 as was earlier stated by the government."
First it was $10, then "uh oh, spageddios", it's $100... still think offshoring is a sound business investment?
Specs leaked - it's the P-P-Powerbook (Score:4, Funny)
I have it on good authority that India is in contact with the P-P-Powerbook [easynetworknyc.com] designers right now for large-scale assembly.
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Re:Dollar vs. (Score:4, Funny)
What do you mean? An african or an european rupee?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:at what cost though? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I'd almost guarantee that it will have better hardware than my first computer (Apple IIe) and that didn't leave me with less of a willingness to push forward on the internet. Ultimately, I'm just kind of being a dick here, but you do have to remember that what we might consider crappy and slow, they might still consider amazing. Yeah, it sucks when it takes 2 minutes to open a web browser, but if you've never seen the web before it's still great, and if it's your only access to the web it's still worth it.
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, back in the days the content was also less demanding.
But if there were a few million users out there with no ability to access "web 2.0" content, I presume that market niche would be filled - either by "light" versions of the heavy sites or by new sites. I'd wager that many could just use their mobile sites.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Very true. On the other hand, back in the days the content was also less demanding. It is like participating in a 2008 car race with a Ford T. In its days it was great, but conditions have changed. (moderate car analogy...)
Makes me want to have a model T in every race just for base line comparison purposes. It would be really sad though if that model T won over modern cars though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Corporations almost never follow sound economic policies. Falls under "not my problem".