February 3, 2009
$10 Laptop. Quick Somebody Get Ballmer More Vallum!
Alright the Indians (no those other Indians), think they can make a $10 laptop! Now think of the ramifications. Microsoft might as well abandon the space this would occupy in the marketplace. There is no OS they could offer that would make sense. There would probably be no channel, direct sale only. I mean really. Would HP stoop to picking up .50c on a sale? –
You read right. First came the $100 One Laptop Per Child windup laptop project, now researchers in India believe they can make one even cheaper, try $10!
This is according to a proposal winding it’s way through the Indian government which believes a laptop computer can be made now for as low as $10.
That means that ten times as many computers could conceivably be made available to poor and underprivileged communities in India and other third world nations than the UN approved OLPC Negroponte models.
Providing support for the project, is Semiconductor Complex, a state-sponsored designer and manufacturer of integrated circuits who stand to win any potential contract for the hardware needed to build it.
Officials are considering two different design proposals from an engineering student from the Vellore Institute of Technology and a researcher from the Indian Institute of Science.
Both sides believe that a laptop comparable to the OLPC can now be made for half the cost of the windup model, but have high hopes that with advances in manufacturing and distribution techniques, that ultimately the price can be slashed to the goal of $10.
Question is will it happen? There were discussions 2 years ago about a $50 laptop that never saw the light of day. Would be great to have it happen though.
[Update]
You know that old saying — “If its too good to be true, it probably is.” That might be the case here. That $10 box really isn’t a laptop but more like a portable brick. That is a metaphor that has been tried 3,4 times before and failed. The last with the AMD Geode PIC. Just not a form factor that flies in the market I am afraid. More here at Wired.
Filed under Mobile Devices, Netbooks by Dr. Dog
Comments on $10 Laptop. Quick Somebody Get Ballmer More Vallum! »
you can build a $10 laptop, but it’s going to be a piece of crap. even if you’re paying reduced Indian prices for labor and trying to manufacture in India using hand-me-down fabs and modified used production lines, the best CPU you’re going to fit on there is a high-end RISC-style 8-bit like the Atmega AVR’s, or a very low end ARM7, MIPS, or similar.
that might - very, very roughly - give you somewhere between 286 and initial Pentium-grade computing power if you’re lucky, but then you still need to get an affordable, useful, tough display that can survive rough rural conditions. The best you can afford for those prices will still probably eat your entire $10 budget without blinking and be less than useful in many lighting conditions.
a better idea would be to scale up cheap cell phones into mini-computers that are basically 8-bit 80’s-era Western machines on steroids and with a more intuitive UI. Even just being able to run a text-based web browser on cached copies of The Wiki in the various Indian languages could be tremendously useful.
I think this idea has been kicked around by several researchers and manufacturers, including Intel (???!!!!!)
Random,
You are right of course. But there is one vehicle that is always in the consumers favor when it comes to electronics. Wait long enough and you will get the price you want. Of course if you wait too long you might care about it anymore!