Slashdot Log In
India Will Show Its $10 Laptop Prototype
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Jan 30, 2009 08:09 AM
from the better-than-a-chicken-in-every-pot dept.
from the better-than-a-chicken-in-every-pot dept.
Tech Ticker writes "The Indian Government last year announced the development of a cheap $10 laptop, but was later rectified as $100 laptop. Now the government has announced that HRD minister Arjun Singh will unveil the prototype of a Rs. 500 ($10) computer. The computer is developed by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai. No specifications were revealed but DNA, a daily newspaper, has mentioned that it will be small and portable, will feature Wi-Fi, LAN, and expandable memory, and will operate on 2 watts of power."
Related Stories
Submission: India will show its $10 Laptop prototype by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Hardware: $10 Laptop Downgraded By Reality; Now Fancy Storage Device 143 comments
Ian Lamont writes "The news last week that the Indian government was working on a $10 laptop was too good to be true. It turns out that the project is actually a wireless-enabled storage device, not a laptop." Update: 02/04 21:36 GMT by T : Always-illuminating Liliputing has a short article with a picture of the device.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
... a $1000 beowulf cluster of those!
Sorry, had to be done...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
For $10, they can't even afford to put the Vista sticker on these things.
Which, by the way, is a plus. I just bought my daughter a new laptop, and they put more stickers on that thing than Dale Jr's NASCAR ride.
The really nasty thing is that not all of the stickers come off, either. A couple of them I was able to remove cleanly, but the one advertising the processor, and of course the "Vista fer Sure!" sticker seemed pretty immutable.
Hell fire, I'll take half a dozen of those sawbuck laptops right now if they just leave the friggin' stickers off.
Parent
Re:Imagine... (Score:4, Funny)
Hell fire, I'll take half a dozen of those sawbuck laptops right now if they just leave the friggin' stickers off.
Wow, a promise of a $60 investment! ;D
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Imagine... (Score:5, Interesting)
Dad made it a condition of the sale that they not put the dealer sticker on it.
"but they all have the sticker, we put it on as soon as they get to the lot" said the dealer.
"You do not, you trade cars with other lots and they don't want your sticker on a car they sell" Dad said.
"But I'm not allowed to let a car leave here without it"
"Then you don't get my sale"
He got the car, and there was no sticker on it.
Parent
Re:Imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Imagine... (Score:4, Funny)
wow, all the home page tags stickers came off of the html when I clicked that link ...
Parent
Re:Imagine... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok... 2W each required for power. $1000 buys you 100 of them, max RAM 2GB. So total power consumption for 100 laptops = 200W, or less than one desktop PC.
Buy a some cheap NAS and a few $30 Gb switches at BestBuy.
Run ESXi (if you can) on each (free license). Run 4 Linux-based VMs at 512MB each on each laptop. Throw as many laptops as you can into HA/DRS clusters.
Configure each Linux VM as a beowulf node if you like, or not. Who cares, you're maximizing/balancing the resources on all 100 machines, do what you like with them.
You now have about 400 Linux VMs running on about $1500 worth of hardware.
Poor Man's Datacenter for about the price of one gaming PC. Oh sorry, you'd probably need at least one decent-sized room fan somewhere nearby too, $30 at Home Depot.
Parent
I hope they succeed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Best of luck to India.
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why Negroponte's OLPC project didn't succeed before. I can buy a netbook on Newegg for 250$... yet a laptop with a quarter of the power and less functionality can't be built for less than 200$ for the OLPC.
It didn't succeed because Negroponte wouldn't let anyone who wanted one buy it. It's that simple. Had he done that he would have sold enough of them to get them into the field and had money to continue development and produce them faster.
So what stopped Negroponte was....Negroponte.
Parent
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:5, Informative)
It didn't succeed because Negroponte wouldn't let anyone who wanted one buy it. It's that simple. Had he done that he would have sold enough of them to get them into the field and had money to continue development and produce them faster.
So what stopped Negroponte was....Negroponte.
Uhm, sources for this, please? According to the Wikipedia entry, there's an estimated 1,000,000 units sold http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Summary_of_laptop_orders [wikipedia.org] and according to a recent written interview with Negroponte, they're about to deploy the 1,000,000th unit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Summary_of_laptop_orders [wikipedia.org] --- so I fail to see where your assertion holds together. You can't take orders for a million units and be all that selective about who buys them. Through the B1G1 / G1G1 programs anyone with a valid credit card could purchase. That certainly sounds like an open door.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
G1G1 was a special time limited, was USA only and cost twice as much as a normal OLPC. Not exactly an 'open door'.
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple. I, as a consumer in the U.S., couldn't simply buy one. I had to use the Buy-one, Give-one program. A much better program would be to let anyone buy them, in any amount without doubling the price. If it was a hit in the retail market, the price would have come down.
It failed before it started.
Parent
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
If he had just let people buy them in single units for the stated original cost he would have considerably more money to produce more units and would have likely hit that one million unit mark much much sooner.
He also started the G1G1 program only AFTER people complained they couldn't buy one for themselves. Furthermore he STOPPED the program instead of just letting it run and gaining whatever money he could get out of it.
As for citations do your own damn research - the rest of us have been watching this train wreck since it started.
Parent
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) people don't like to be forced into things - so forcing them to effectively buy 2 and give one away I'm sure didn't sit well with most people.
2) Browsing the web and email etc is fine... but his whole purpose was to help education in developing countries... but from what I've seen there wasn't really much benefit for people in developing countries besides being able to research stuff online... Perhaps it would have fared better if it came with free e-textbooks or had lessons and quizes and translations of different books built in so that it was obvious what the real benefits where.
Parent
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:4, Informative)
Each country has its own education policy... they'd never accept the OLPC if it imposed its own educational curricula. There's no such thing as a "neutral" educational material...
I know what you're thinking, but no, not even for math! ... during the years of military government here in Argentina it was forbidden to teach through Sets theory. It became the norm later, when democracy returned. ... Even without that craziness, there are a lot of ways to approach math.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There was an article on Slashdot in the last day or two that listed the 1,000,000 number but also said that 300,000 had been sold via a government contract to one South American country, and 600,000 to another (one of the countries was Peru, not sure of the other). So basically that one million was two individual very large deals, not lots and lots of people suddenly developing an interest in buying the product. The problem with having a few big deals is that if you don't get the next big deal, you are ou
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can buy a netbook on Newegg for 250$... yet a laptop with a quarter of the power and less functionality can't be built for less than 200$ for the OLPC.
The OLPC's laptop may have a quarter of the processing power of your $250 netbook, but it also only consumed a quarter of the current. Price and performance were not the only factors considered when designing the XO-1.
Had he done that he would have sold enough of them to get them into the field and had money to continue development and produce them faster.
Open sales are great if you have the manufacturing capacity to deliver them, but the XO-1 project didn't. I guess you weren't involved in the "Give One, Get None" debacle of 2007; I didn't receive mine until mid-Spring 2008 because of their supply chain and distribution issues.
Parent
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
because you know nothing abotu the OLPC project.
your netbook is a toy that if dropped once in the sand or mud it will be dead.
the OLPC is a cheap panasonic toughbook. the OLPC is designed to survive in 3rd world conditions Operate from 0% humidity to 100% humidity in 120 degree heat.
Your netbook is a child's toy compared to what the OLPC was supposed to be. It's like how the top of the line Alienware or Dell XPS is a complete joke to a Toughbook 30.
and it's why a toughbook 30 is $5800.00 for lessthan 1/2 the processing power of the Alienware laptop.
OLPC = toughbook netbook. They cost more plus they dont want to force all cultures to learn english to use it. Unlike all netbooks.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and it's why a toughbook 30 is $5800.00 for lessthan 1/2 the processing power of the Alienware laptop.
OLPC = toughbook netbook. They cost more plus they dont want to force all cultures to learn english to use it. Unlike all netbooks.
Which is the main reason their main customers the police have been moving away in droves. First it was the CF-48 semi-rugged for $1.6K. After 5 years of that, it was why can't we just use off the shelf Dells. So now we are spending just under 1K for Dell laptops. Generally the C
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
> I don't see why Negroponte's OLPC project didn't succeed before.
the N word
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
yet a laptop with a quarter of the power and less functionality can't be built for less than 200$ for the OLPC.
I don't know. The more I hear about this "laptop" (portable, operating off of 2 watts, expandable memory...) the more I'm convinced it's the real deal.
Soon, all Indian children will have calculators.
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me guess, you've never been to India. Sure, there are places that are modern and very livable, but you also have many areas with slum conditions unimaginable in Western Europe and North America.
Have you ever seen a river of shit and waste with a plank over it leading to someone's home?
Parent
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I hope they succeed. (Score:4, Informative)
Having been to India for work, specifically Bangalore, I can tell you that there are places you can go that you would think you are in your office in the US or Europe. In fact, really the only things I noticed while at work were the different plugs you had to use. Well, and the large number of Indian workers, but that wasn't a massive change from work in the US. :)
However, go anywhere outside of your nice office complexes, hotels and living accommodations and you *know* you are in India. It looks exactly how I would expect a third world country to look. Gutted buildings, tents set up for people to live under on-ramps, terrible roads, almost no street signals (not that anyone would obey them anyway). Go outside a city and its even more obvious.
Let's be clear, I'm not saying India is a horrible place, but its clear that they would need a lot of changes to have the same feel you might have living in the West.
If you have ever been to Jamaica, India outside the office parks looks just like Jamaica outside the resorts, except with a LOT more people.
And rule of thumb, eat the Indian food in India. The faux Western food sucks ass. If you are invited to go to TGI Friday's, make sure you bring a good amount of money, its one of the more expensive places in Bangalore.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yamuna, the river on the banks of which the capital city of India is located, is one such river.
"Yamuna is one of the most polluted rivers in the world, especially around New Delhi, the capital of India, which dumps about 57% of its waste into the river."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamuna [wikipedia.org]
Lower GDP vs. lower cost of living (Score:5, Informative)
By most accounts, and the most important of them is the GDP per capita
Translated into dollars or into Big Macs? There's a difference. Plenty of countries have deeply undervalued currencies, which makes the cost of living in those countries appear a lot cheaper than the cost of a comparable lifestyle in North America, Europe, Japan, or the Republic of Korea. Look up purchasing power parity [wikipedia.org] and The Economist's Big Mac Index in the encyclopedia, and follow the references if you're interested. [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Live like animals, or like plants? (Score:4, Insightful)
The vast majority of their population still live like animals.
As opposed to some other country, where the majority of the population live like plants? I guess you're right: too many USA residents have become couch potatoes.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nonsense. The first world was NATO and its sphere of influence. The second world was the Warsaw Pact and its sphere of influence. The third world was everyone else. The terms ceased to be useful in the 90s when the Warsaw Pact fell apart.
Critical thinking anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
No specifications were revealed but DNA, a daily newspaper, has mentioned that it will be small and portable, will feature Wi-Fi, LAN, and expandable memory, and will operate on 2 watts of power.
A little critical thinking here: How, exactly, would anyone build that for $10? How much is the cheapest of cheap WiFi adapters at retail? $30? $20? Okay, now how thin are those margins?
I just don't see how they can pull all that off for $10.
Ignore IP licensing and engineering costs (Score:5, Interesting)
That'll save you a bundle right there. If you write the engineering off as a total loss after you take the first corporation bankrupt and then you stiff the IP owners on royalties when you build them, you'll be on the way to getting it done. It will be flimsy, not include batteries (for 2W you can buy rechargeables), and have a very poor screen, and the $10 won't include packaging, marketing, distribution, or profit. The QA will be poor too, so there will be lots of failures, but at that price point most won't bother to send it back for repairs.
Parent
Re:Critical thinking anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Get everything on one chip. The difference between cost of production of a CPU chip vs a CPU + a dozen periferials are marginal. And then you save on motherboards, adapters, communication etc.
2) Retail takes some 50% cut. Other middlemen, another 30%. The actual cost of production is like 5-10% of the retail price. I've seen your $10 USB hubs I've bought for 3PLN (that is $1) in retail in Poland. That is including tax, shipping to Polish retailer, and a bunch of other fees after they left the hands of the manufacturer. So, yes, the margins are ENORMOUS.
3) Development is half or more of the actual cost of the device. If the development is 100% government funded, and you pay only for your physical copy of the laptop, not for license to all the firmware and hardware design, the cost goes down by a huge margin.
4) They have all the technology. Intel, NVidia, LG, whatever brand name you mention, they likely have their factories in India. And the government may simply declare any NDA null and void by fiat, hire their employees, and have them re-create whatever they had made at their original employees. Not saying this will certainly happen, but it's not impossible - all the licensing, sublicensing, sub-sublicensing costs for all the little parts, protocols, interfaces, patents and so on, are another HUGE chunk of the cost. And if it's not a direct copy, but a rewrite, and all hidden inside one dedicated chip, who is ever going to find out?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Retail takes some 50% cut. Other middlemen, another 30%. The actual cost of production is like 5-10% of the retail price. I've seen your $10 USB hubs I've bought for 3PLN (that is $1) in retail in Poland. That is including tax, shipping to Polish retailer, and a bunch of other fees after they left the hands of the manufacturer. So, yes, the margins are ENORMOUS.
But you're wrong in assuming that the x% + y% plus whatnot are just profiteering. Yes, the manufacturing cost may be relatively small compared to
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The original would likely have been Chinese to begin with, so being a Chinese knockoff wouldn't necessarily mean anything. :)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Critical thinking anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Critical thinking anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a cheap graphing calculator!
The TI-85 I needed for my high school algebra classes cost $90. A decade and a half later, that same model still exists and still costs $90. As far as I can tell, all they've changed in that time is the faceplate and replaced the proprietary serial connector with a USB plug.
If the graphing calculator market had followed the same price/performance curve that personal computers have, we'd have plenty of powerful $10 calculators today.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
From TFA - $20 actually (Score:5, Funny)
But they hope for a lower price with mass production.
"At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down," R P Agarwal, secretary, higher education said.
Meanwhile, this laptop [amazon.com] is still priced at $12.25.
I Smell Crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Leverage a MP3 player (Score:3, Interesting)
Your average chinese MP3 player or cellphone with an added keyboard could be repurposed as a very cheap "laptop".
Pre-order gift (Score:5, Funny)
Also, a calendar going up to 2050 specifying exactly the year of "Linux on the Desktop."
Oh, huh. (Score:4, Funny)
The sheer hubris of this announcement made me wonder: When did M. Night Shyamalan start making computers?
Can we get that price lower? I think we *can*! (Score:5, Funny)
A $10 notebook is yet more proof that free markets, competition and Globalization will ensure the future strength prosperity of Western Civilization!
But can we get that price lower? I think we *can*!
1.) First, we have to trim the lowest 10% of performers from every organization. (Pay bonuses to executives for doing this effectively.) Tip: trim Human Resources last -- we need them to do the hatchet work while senior management strokes the shareholders and analysts.
2.) Repeat 1.) a few times and what will remain is a lean and absolutely *amazing* company of workers who do more error-free work with a facial muscle spasm than other schmucks do in 6 months with both hands and 20/20 vision!
3.) Next, we find cheaper workers. India's labour costs are a big part of that $10. Whom will we get to do the work? EASY... we train bonobos. We don't even have to feed them much -- those suckers are pretty lean.
4.) Sack all Testing and Quality Assurance people. With our lean, superproductive staff and well-trained bonobos, we won't need to test. And if there's a problem, we'll silence talk of it with legal threats and "promise" to fix the bug(s) in a future release. (Ha ha!)
5.) Squeeze as much free money as we can out of the government. If the government is Pro-Business, say we're creating new jobs in a cutting-edge market. If the government is Green, say we're saving the bonobos. If it's a coalition, say whatever you have to say no matter how self-contradictory or idiotic.
6.) Spend cash from 5.) on bribes to steal someone else's technology. R&D is for losers.
7.) Throw the product over the wall and pump up the advertising! If it fails, lock the workers out and give senior management a round of bonuses. But it won't fail, because using the above strategy, I think we have the $10 notebook down to $2.35.
Unless of course "$10" is a typo.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
China does not have innovation. Unlike Japan, China does not feel the need to rise above simply copying stuff poorly and selling the resulting product for less than the original.
And frankly, to me it seems their strategy is paying off.
Re:Where is China's innovation? (Score:5, Insightful)
China does not have innovation. Unlike Japan,
Perhaps if you were just a little older, you would remember when all Japan could do was copy Western technology. However today Japan can innovate. Give China another 30 years, and then watch out!
Parent
Re:Where is China's innovation? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have seen the phone in action and it works just fine.
I am guessing you will never get these mobiles in the U.S.
Parent
Re:Ridiculous price (Score:4, Funny)
It's a misuse of the term labtop.
I really don't know how they could have misused that term.
Parent