6 ms·

Indian government explores $10 laptop

30 points by hsuresh 18y ago

TweedHeads 18y ago
You can find cheap pocket translators or pocket calendars on walmart these days. Not far from solar-powered pocket netbooks, like old calculators, I say.
kqr2 18y ago
The $10 looks like a transcription error. It should probably be $100 and the current version costs $200 which is consistent with what an OLPC XO laptop costs: http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/30/10-laptop-coming-from-india-on-february-3rd-or-so-they-say/ http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/30/10-laptop-coming-from-i...
ph0rque 18y ago
I'll believe it when I see it.
- hsuresh 18y ago
  They are apparently launching it on Feb 3rd. We'll know soon.
radu_floricica 18y ago
There was an article these days about how companies are starting to wish for the other face of Moore's law: computers getting cheaper every year at the same performance. The article was about the next Windows, but I always thought it applies much better to laptops. I'd say there are three levels of performance suitable for such mini-machines: - The equivalent of the last 486 or the first pentiums: can play mp3, browse the web (without the bells and whistles), display a pdf, run simple office applications, have ethernet and usb, may not have wireless. This is what a real $100 laptop should be like, and what readers could become (keyboard?) - Can show movies, run a contemporary OS and application suite (including last versions of Open/Microsoft Office) - pretty much everything an office computers does, without the games and other needy apps. This is already covered, as there are many cheap laptops just like this. - Sub $100 laptops. This is a very interesting field, because anything can be done. Text-only and monochrome displays, dedicated applications, the field is huge and the prices can be as low as any hand-held chinese game ($10 is not at all absurd). There are two big issues here: compatibility and net connectivity. I don't know what an USB or Ethernet chip goes for, but it it's $2 it's too much.
- paddy_m 18y ago
  I had a 486 Dx4 120 (AMD), eventually with 64MB of ram, it always ran NT4. I remember downloading mp3s in 1997 or 1998. The machine couldn't play the mp3, but I could decode it in bulk to wav files, which it could play.
  - bemmu 18y ago
    I remember Winamp could play MP3s if at 22khz but not 44 :)
- ph0rque 18y ago
  Yup... I've been wishing for a touch-screen, 4"x3" display I can hang in all the rooms of my house to control a variety of things... I think the sweet spot in terms of price would be $20-$50.
- potatolicious 18y ago
  The problem is that there's a very real and finite limit to the "Moore's price law" as you mentioned. Yes, things get cheaper rapidly after initial R&D, but this slows down dramatically after a few years. Once the initial R&D cost is recouped you will find that there is still a significant production cost that is slow to reduce and doesn't really move much at all. I recently bought a 200MHz ARM7 board with 128MB of RAM. At bulk rates it still costs ~$70 a pop, and you still have to add peripherals to that to make it a viable personal computer. At these prices we're hitting close to production cost.
- old-gregg 18y ago
  You'll be surprised if you find an actual PC with 486. I have installed XP on a Pentium II machine with 256MB of RAM and it was barely usable even for web surfing. Without bells and whistles: scrolling simple text+picture pages in IE/FF was very slow. Launching any non-trivial application also took terribly long. Not just the Office, but even Firefox felt more like Photoshop. I couldn't believe how bloated the software had become. These $100 machines you're talking about can't run normal software, you'll need Microsoft to start selling Win98 or you'd need a stripped-down Linux with XFCE or something. The key to performance IMO is smaller binary sizes: those CPUs had tiny caches and pathetic memory throughput. Pentiums ran on 33-66Mz FSB, compare it to 1066Mz of modern machines.
jcl 18y ago
I'd love to know how they calculated the $200 "hidden cost" of the OLPC laptops. I'd also wonder what that figure is for other platforms, and how they plan to avoid it for their $10 implementation.
mdasen 18y ago
They're launching a laptop for $10? With 2GB of RAM? You can't even buy 2GB of RAM for that price. I really hope this is real, but when you put together the costs of a display, RAM, some sort of persistent storage, heck even the keyboard is going to run more than $1. Keyboard $1 Trackpad $1 RAM $1 Small amount of flash memory $1 Screen $1 Labor $1 Shipping $1 Processor $1 Motherboard $1 Ports $1 And none of that is going to be $1.
- critic 18y ago
  > Screen $1 We may have to go back to blinkenlights for displays.
  - mbowcock 18y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lite-Brite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lite-Brite
- jyothi 18y ago
  It says the price is currently $20 though. At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down Still it is quite unbelievable. If it was something built to browse internet alone with little RAM and processing power may be. But their claim and price doesn't match.
- iigs 18y ago
  You could get the flash, ram, processor, and most of the peripheral ports integrated into a microcontroller package at well under $3 for the right volume, particularly if they were not component packaged but chips epoxied onto the motherboard. The motherboard and keyboard would probably be the same component (think pocket calculator membrane keys), and if there was a trackpad it might work similarly (otherwise use arrow keys for free). In this context, government would give Rs 2.5 lakh per institution for 10 Kbps connection and subsidise 25% of costs for private and state government colleges. 10kbps is obviously a tiny amount of bandwidth, especially per institution. This is clearly not enough for doing interactive browsing in a class. For this reason I suspect that the 2GB is actually flash, not DRAM. You couldn't keep a room full of 64k DRAM computers busy with 20-30% of a dialup modem.
anuraggoel 18y ago
Government subsidies can not be ruled out - that would change the equation completely. Additionally, this device will probably not be available for general consumption - it sounds like they plan to use it exclusively for education. If not, reselling 2 GB RAM sticks imported from India could become a lucrative business.

30 points by hsuresh 18y ago

You can find cheap pocket translators or pocket calendars on walmart these days. Not far from solar-powered pocket netbooks, like old calculators, I say.

kqr2 18y ago

The $10 looks like a transcription error. It should probably be $100 and the current version costs $200 which is consistent with what an OLPC XO laptop costs: http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/30/10-laptop-coming-from-india-on-february-3rd-or-so-they-say/ http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/30/10-laptop-coming-from-i...

ph0rque 18y ago

I'll believe it when I see it.

hsuresh 18y ago
They are apparently launching it on Feb 3rd. We'll know soon.

radu_floricica 18y ago

There was an article these days about how companies are starting to wish for the other face of Moore's law: computers getting cheaper every year at the same performance. The article was about the next Windows, but I always thought it applies much better to laptops. I'd say there are three levels of performance suitable for such mini-machines: - The equivalent of the last 486 or the first pentiums: can play mp3, browse the web (without the bells and whistles), display a pdf, run simple office applications, have ethernet and usb, may not have wireless. This is what a real $100 laptop should be like, and what readers could become (keyboard?) - Can show movies, run a contemporary OS and application suite (including last versions of Open/Microsoft Office) - pretty much everything an office computers does, without the games and other needy apps. This is already covered, as there are many cheap laptops just like this. - Sub $100 laptops. This is a very interesting field, because anything can be done. Text-only and monochrome displays, dedicated applications, the field is huge and the prices can be as low as any hand-held chinese game ($10 is not at all absurd). There are two big issues here: compatibility and net connectivity. I don't know what an USB or Ethernet chip goes for, but it it's $2 it's too much.

paddy_m 18y ago
I had a 486 Dx4 120 (AMD), eventually with 64MB of ram, it always ran NT4. I remember downloading mp3s in 1997 or 1998. The machine couldn't play the mp3, but I could decode it in bulk to wav files, which it could play.
- bemmu 18y ago
  I remember Winamp could play MP3s if at 22khz but not 44 :)
ph0rque 18y ago
Yup... I've been wishing for a touch-screen, 4"x3" display I can hang in all the rooms of my house to control a variety of things... I think the sweet spot in terms of price would be $20-$50.
potatolicious 18y ago
The problem is that there's a very real and finite limit to the "Moore's price law" as you mentioned. Yes, things get cheaper rapidly after initial R&D, but this slows down dramatically after a few years. Once the initial R&D cost is recouped you will find that there is still a significant production cost that is slow to reduce and doesn't really move much at all. I recently bought a 200MHz ARM7 board with 128MB of RAM. At bulk rates it still costs ~$70 a pop, and you still have to add peripherals to that to make it a viable personal computer. At these prices we're hitting close to production cost.
old-gregg 18y ago
You'll be surprised if you find an actual PC with 486. I have installed XP on a Pentium II machine with 256MB of RAM and it was barely usable even for web surfing. Without bells and whistles: scrolling simple text+picture pages in IE/FF was very slow. Launching any non-trivial application also took terribly long. Not just the Office, but even Firefox felt more like Photoshop. I couldn't believe how bloated the software had become. These $100 machines you're talking about can't run normal software, you'll need Microsoft to start selling Win98 or you'd need a stripped-down Linux with XFCE or something. The key to performance IMO is smaller binary sizes: those CPUs had tiny caches and pathetic memory throughput. Pentiums ran on 33-66Mz FSB, compare it to 1066Mz of modern machines.

jcl 18y ago

I'd love to know how they calculated the $200 "hidden cost" of the OLPC laptops. I'd also wonder what that figure is for other platforms, and how they plan to avoid it for their $10 implementation.

mdasen 18y ago

They're launching a laptop for $10? With 2GB of RAM? You can't even buy 2GB of RAM for that price. I really hope this is real, but when you put together the costs of a display, RAM, some sort of persistent storage, heck even the keyboard is going to run more than $1. Keyboard $1 Trackpad $1 RAM $1 Small amount of flash memory $1 Screen $1 Labor $1 Shipping $1 Processor $1 Motherboard $1 Ports $1 And none of that is going to be $1.

critic 18y ago
> Screen $1 We may have to go back to blinkenlights for displays.
- mbowcock 18y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lite-Brite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lite-Brite
jyothi 18y ago
It says the price is currently $20 though. At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down Still it is quite unbelievable. If it was something built to browse internet alone with little RAM and processing power may be. But their claim and price doesn't match.
iigs 18y ago
You could get the flash, ram, processor, and most of the peripheral ports integrated into a microcontroller package at well under $3 for the right volume, particularly if they were not component packaged but chips epoxied onto the motherboard. The motherboard and keyboard would probably be the same component (think pocket calculator membrane keys), and if there was a trackpad it might work similarly (otherwise use arrow keys for free). In this context, government would give Rs 2.5 lakh per institution for 10 Kbps connection and subsidise 25% of costs for private and state government colleges. 10kbps is obviously a tiny amount of bandwidth, especially per institution. This is clearly not enough for doing interactive browsing in a class. For this reason I suspect that the 2GB is actually flash, not DRAM. You couldn't keep a room full of 64k DRAM computers busy with 20-30% of a dialup modem.

anuraggoel 18y ago

Government subsidies can not be ruled out - that would change the equation completely. Additionally, this device will probably not be available for general consumption - it sounds like they plan to use it exclusively for education. If not, reselling 2 GB RAM sticks imported from India could become a lucrative business.