Simputer Available? 194
Anonymous Coward writes "The Simputer (marketed by PicoPeta, the inventors and manufactured by the Defence Electronics PSU - BEL) has a website now and is available for sale (including outside India). Some pics can be found at the picture gallery. This story has been discussed a few times before here at /. here, here and here. Of particular note are some of the features, notably the device goes beyond the typical handheld/PDA and has some brand new innovations. For instance, it uses accelerometers to sense motion and this is used to give commands to the computer (for instance, to zoom a picture, you just have to move the Simputer towards you and to turn a page, you flick it like you would turn a page for a book. Also has an integrated smart card reader plus writer, very useful for several business applications."
Over-correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Vehicles (Score:4, Insightful)
They had BETTER have an option to turn that off, or else it sure would make using it on a bus interesting.
Re:I hear (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/busines
International Business Machines, the US computing and information technology services group, yesterday won a 10-year outsourcing contract worth up to $750m -- from an Indian company.
So, Is it time for Indians to start shouting "STOP US companies from stealing Indian jobs"???
Grow up!!
Re:Vehicles (Score:1, Insightful)
Change in direction is also acceleration.
slashdotters are very stereotypical.. (Score:3, Insightful)
No I am not from India. I live in North America and I am a starving coder also. I just have respect for development of technology no matter where it is made.
Re:This accelerometer thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Can you imagine (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
The group of scientists "Bangalore Seven" developed the Simputer with the average user in mind. The average user lives in a indian village and is much different from the western users. So the design is also different to fit the specific needs of it's customers:
# Power supply in rural India is pretty bad, with frequent "load-shedding" blackouts. Without an UPS you can't run a desktop. The simputer runs on three AAA batteries.
# Your average user may has never used a computer before. So you'll have to keep the design as simple as possible.
# Desktop PCs consist of many parts that fail too easily under rough conditions. You need air condition or other internal sophisticated cooling equipment. Indian summers are hot and humid during the monsoon season. See the a chart of Delhi [delhitourism.com] an an example. If something fails it's hard to get a replacement.
# The simputer is still much to expensive for customers with an average income of 40$/month. So expect that many people in a group (family, friends, collegues) will share one simputer. The desing makes sharing easy. Private data is saved to smartcards.
I think there're still many issues with the simputer. It's much too expensive. The price will have to drop to 50$, so they'll need to get the indian government to invest in this thing. Language support seems to be quite good with Hindi, Kannada, English already supported. Bengali , Tamil, Maharathi, Urdu also need to support. And Sanskrit would be nice for high-tech pundits =). But what to the illiterate people do? They need an icon-based GUI, speech output, or even speech recognition. Easy to set up printing would also be a nice feature.
As for the motion-controlled features we'll just have to wait for first-hand reviews. There're already games [amidasimputer.com] preinstalled based on this feature.
If all these requirements are met then there'll be a big market for the simputer - the whole india subcontinent in fact. And there's china that has similar requirements to get a majority of people to use computers. So India wouldn't have problems to export large quantities of the simputer to other emerging nations.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Something one can carry around or pass around is very important: People tend to have a very significant communal tendency in India, and sharing/passing around a computer to look up crop prices or weather or stock prices is important. So, small size is definitely a plus there: one simputer can be used by multiple families/farmers. That was at least one of the founding principles behind the simputer AFAIK.
This stuff, once enough apps are developed indigenously, can be programmed so that stereotypical functions can be performed with one or two taps. Saves the extra learning required to operate a full-blown desktop.
In fact, zooming by accelerometer (Not sure if acceleratometer is even a term) is a nifty HCI feature good for naive users. I'd love to have something like that on my Palm
Re:slashdotters are very stereotypical.. (Score:1, Insightful)
They spent a lot of time and energy on the Simputer, but it's still no better than a Palm or similar handheld. For durability, I'd still prefer a Palm Vx.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you'll find that mains power is rare in the market it is intended for - Rural or marginal India. Batteries rule while power surges are frequent.
Desktops need a lot of maintenance and upgrading to keep them sustainable/viable for more than three or four years. Just one person can carry a dozen of these on a bus to the city for flash upgrades.
In a place where families can share a single room the standard amount of space required is not the same as Padsville, USA. Finding a secure, dry space for a fragile PC, monitor & spaghetti is not always possible.
DK