India's $10 laptop is not a laptop
By Thomas Ricker 
posted February 4th 2009 3:28AM
posted February 4th 2009 3:28AM
You know what was missing from the so-call "unveiling" of India's $10 laptop yesterday? Photos. Now we think we know why. The $10 laptop is not a laptop at all, the display-less and keyboard-less prototype device demonstrated is just a 10 x 5-inch wide slab that stores (and apparently prints) distributed learning materials which can later be retrieved by an impoverished child... using a laptop and paper he can't afford to purchase. It's also said to cost $30 and could be a component to a low cost laptop in the future; a claim that is fiercely disputed by Taiwanese component makers. Still, without any official photos of the device or specs posted to one of the many government agencies involved in the project, well, we still can't say we're 100% confident saying what this device is. Not that chest-thumping rhetoric and purposeful misinformation should be a surprise from politicians seeking re-election. Update: Added that image to the right of what's purported to be the non-laptop prototype by The Hindu (and we're not going to argue with the Hindu).
[Via OnlyGizmos, Thanks Shrikanth G.]
Read -- Not a laptop 1
Read -- Not a laptop 2
Read -- Taiwan's laptop industry skeptical
Really not surprised on this one, too good to be true always is.
"a claim that is fiercely disputed by Taiwanese component makers"
ye when uv got upwards of a billion people in your country often bulk buying makes things ridiculously cheaper. But in saying that $10 would make a pretty crap device anyway.
Add $20 screen, $3 keyboard, $1 mouse and you've got a PC! Maybe...
I've got a $1 laptop. Admittedly it's just a slab of rubber, but if you put a computer on top of it you can get some serious learning done.
When will the madness end?
Hey I can get Windows Vista for $1 in my country!! Viva la piratería ;)
The project was sabotaged by non-state actors in Pakistan :-)
You PAID for Vista?
Well that's shit.
I dunno, it sounds quite cool. Instead of bulk buying loads of prohibitively expensive textbooks you just have a printer that prints the relevant pages as and when they are needed onto some cheap recycled paper. Kids can stick them in folders and end up with textbooks anyway. School can trickle the price of teaching material out over the whole year without needing to buy it all at once. Education authority can push out new material and amendments as and when needed, via whatever form of internet is around.
Sounds better than being stuck with 30 year old dog-eared textbooks filled with out-of-date information.
With so little info, it's hard to tell exactly what it does, BUT I can't see how cool it is. Save info in a portable device so that they can be printed without a PC/laptop? Sounds a lot like a flash memory card to me. Some printers can print from a flash memory card directly.
So it's an Etch a Sketch with a printer interface?
I wasn't expecting much out of the "$10 laptop" claim, but Christ, I think this product is grounds for laptops to sue them for defamation of character.
aren't all these posts about the $10, $20 ... laptops, a waste of everybody's time?
please don't be that ignorant the next time you post a comment on a gadget blog about a cheap pc.
Yes.... But I can also sell you a laptop for 10 dollars .... that is not a laptop.
LMAO... Ha Ha... You Got PUNKED!!!!
$ 10 laptop thats crazy Unless you got yourself a used V-Tech toy from a thrift shop.
its a calculator!
Wait....so it's a thirty-dollar 2GB flash drive? Um...can anyone say scam? The Indian government could just buy drives in bulk(newegg?), put them in their own case, and sell them for profit.....
I think it has wifi too, but I don't understand what for. What a disappointment!
yes the indian government is going to go to NewEgg of all places, when india is very close to where they make the things that get exported to the US and market up 400%
Well that would explain how they made a computer that costs less than a laptop screen. There is no screen, and there's not much of a computer either.
it was never a laptop,, someone jumped the gun and published it on one website and now you konw the rest of the story..
its actually set top box.. with much fewer features than what is being reported..
Does it comes with windows 7?
It comes with a tutorial called getting free political mileage
No, it comes with Windows 95.
A Laptop for Rs 500... bouy it would really give bill gates and steve jobs sleepless nights... it really looked impossible.. but i must say that the Indian govt has started to believe in the power and role of technology in education... they have learnt their lesson from One laptop per child concept by Nicholas Negroponte...
Nightmares? Can't see too many trading their MacBooks in for an olpc effort.
Maybe an arm processor, Some light version of linux, video out & volia you gt half a pc. Maybe the government is mass ordering it locally to bring the prices down...
Since Engadget's reporting on what something is not. How about rectifying the FUD over the horrendous SKUs of Windows 7? Because it isn't what you guys made it out to be. Or would that be too responsible of you guys.
So, its not a computer, but a storage device with no keyboard or screen that holds data that can be retrieved or printed by a computer.
So its a freakin' USB thumb drive? A 10" high 5 inch wide USB thumb drive? Whisky Tango Foxtrot, Over?
so this whole 'laptop' thing is just a song and dance.
*waits for someone to make a bad joke out of this*
Price creep!
It isn't a $10 anything it's costing around $100 don't you racist iDiots read the BBC ?
Perhaps the most funny and poignant post I've seen on Engadget, ever. It really does contrast nicely to the idol/politician worship typically reserved for this space.
It is election year in India and during this season following incredible/fictitious things start appearing through media:
1. Happy farmers
2. Village kids in school uniform smiling
3. Poor/village women getting medical services with a baby in hand
4. Food grain promises to poor people at stupidly low prices
5. A $10 laptop
6. Cars running fast on clean roads infront of tall buildings
7. A flyover with similar things mentioned in point 6 (same flyover used by previous govt. as well..!)
8. A manufacturing unit with all workers smiling (some small industry loan ad)
9. Electric poles and cables running across fields with point 1
10. Pre-owned/rejected russian fighter jets flying in sky with foreign guests smiling..
Well after all it's a "personal" computer, right?
Not surprising. They did the same thing before with the useless 'Simputer'.
I think that may be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
A computing device that stores information which when plugged into a computer lets it retrieve information stored on it.
So, the much vaunted 10$ laptop is just a 30$ external hard drive!? I wonder how much he got paid to create that.
The only thing harder to believe than a 10$ laptop is that this guy isn't in jail for fraud at this point.
the funny thing about this whole story is that it isn't even a hard drive Its a 2GB flash drive with some sort of printer port, mde out of cheaply manufactured Taiwanese parts that actually cost MORE than its regular 2GB flash drive couterpart. So basically if you live in India and already could afford a computer your laughing your ass off at the wasted money, and if you can't afford a computer you can now go out to the stores (after the elections of course) and waste your money on a worthless brick.
So it's not $10 and it's not a laptop...
WTF do they refer to it as the $10 laptop for?
/facepalm
Mobius-
It's kinda like the whole Joe the Plumber thing. Not Joe. Not a plumber. Nuff said.
I think that may be the most irrelevant thing I've ever seen.
Yes, this is example of an educational printout from a $10 laptop.
amazing how our politicians find new & creative ways to humiliate the nation.
i just got my dad who is not tech savvy at all a new Acer Aspire One, it cost me $320 and the specs are at (1.6 Atom, 160 GB HDD, 1GB RAM, wifi, 2 card reader slots, 3 USB ports, LAN, 10" screen)
He can use Office, get online and watch content.
I am pretty sure that there is a way to get that cost down to $175 (get microsoft to offer free software, halve the RAM & HDD, Get rid of a usb port and the card readers, cut our retail margins & get producers to offer this at cost + 3%)
This may not be affordable for a mass or rural users but its infinitely more suited to receive a subsidy to bring prices down to $90 odd.
Now that is something achievable, would not require anyone to waste time conducting glorious amounts of research. Find a configuration, which is on the lower side, find a vendor, sponsors and add subsidy. distribute.
hell, you can even add the politicians bribes at $10 a head and its still easier to do than work on a 10$ laptop. but the govt will never do it, because its actually something useful and the Govt of India is not interested in doing something useful, they just like to talk about it.
acer aspire one with a 10" screen...?
do you know something we dont?
lol that made me laugh
beautiful thing indeed. someone post the orz pls ?
India... 'nuff said
STFU