Indian Government aiming at Laptops priced less than Rs 500

By Ekalavya B • May 4, 2007

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‘Having rejected Nicholas Negroponte’s offer of $100 laptops for schoolchildren, HRD ministry’s idea to make laptops at $10 is firmly taking shape with two designs already in and public sector undertaking Semiconductor Complex evincing interest to be a part of the project,’ reports the Times Of India.

It was pretty shocking to read about the Government’s rejection of the $100 laptop proposal. But keeping the corruption aside for the time being – a 10$ Laptop does sound rather amazing.

But is it really possible?
So far, the cost of one laptop, after factoring in labour charges, is coming to $47 but the ministry feels the price will come down dramatically considering the fact that the demand would be for one million laptops.

“The cost is encouraging and we are hopeful it would come down to $10. We would also look into the possibility of some Indian company manufacturing the parts,” an official said.

The two designs with the ministry are from a final year engineering student of Vellore Institute of Technology and a researcher from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Due to reasons of Intellectual Property Rights being insisted by the two designers, the ministry is not parting with the design except giving out some of the major details.

The laptop would be made on a single board which would make it easy to find faults and rectify it, say sources.

Let us have a look at Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop:

This machine runs on extremely low power, includes a hand pulley for power generation, includes built-in wireless networking capabilities and a screen with indoor/outdoor reading modes.

Pretty neat.

Well coming back to our $10 Laptop, 10 US Dollars would equate to around Rs 400 – 500.
Would a decent machine seriously be possible at this price? Even mobile phones haven’t breached this low a price barrier yet.
Are we looking at taking a step back in technology and offering stripped down machines, like simple word processing machines?

A laptop around Rs 500 does sound improbable but perhaps not impossible.