No $100 in India
This seems to be the plan of the Indian Government. Everyone must have heard about the $100 Laptop project, which was aimed to make cheaper laptops and make them available to children all over the world. I mean in a country like India where Personal Computers are also not available to everyone for $100, you would definitely think this idea would be quite useful. It seems that Government believes that India can manufacture its own $100 Laptop soon and which can be used to give to every children in the country. But to be honest when do they really believe that India will achieve this feat, its not that no company in India is trying it. There are some companies trying to achieve such a difficult goal but let’s face it they are all in their first stages and If I were to guess they won’t be achieved anyway before 2008 or even 2009 or it may take longer depending on Government policies on the import costs of hardware.
The Government is once again in it’s only-Indian-products-allowed type of mentality. I admire the courage of India in thinking that it can be achieved by us but still when whole world will be having $100 Laptop why should Indian Children be looking upset because Indian Government wants it to be a “Made in India” Laptop which they give to their children.
Other than these there are many other questions that will arise with such laptops being distributed. First of all, many children come from a very poor economic background and these laptops will certainly become and object to gain money by selling them. If this problem is tackled by the Government then there would be no problem in bringing out such laptops, if our Government ever does that.
There is some nice info on the $100 Laptop: Wikipedia
January 8th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Just a small doubt… Do poor children need laptops or better infrastructure and food?
I heard the OLPC OS can be tried out for free on Virtual Platforms, let me google it and try to know if its really worth it. Engadget says its Symbolic!
January 8th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Actually the system is based on Fedora Core if I am right and I agree that they require infrastructure but a country where hundereds of crores of dollars go down the drain nearly every year on the most useless projects its not a big cost to pay.
January 8th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
I agree with Harsh J. If we are talking about basic needs, food and water comes first. If we talk of education, why not start with reading books and blackboards and training for teachers. However, I still like the idea - and would love to see a $100 laptop, however used I may be to paying $3000 for one. The India-only bias seems to be a bit unreasonable though - if India really cares about poverty, it should care about _world_ poverty, and not trying to boost its image on what is otherwise a fairly noble initiative.
January 8th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Yes I had the same point Dmitri, I mean trying to boost its image for god sake is useless trying to show that we are better in everything is not possible unless and until we are a closed economy which we are not. And I tell you Indian Government rarely bothers about poverty in the country because of many of Indian loans from World Bank go wasted or into the pockets of high authority. And training of teachers I do believe that is important considering the fact that India also lacks in that department.
January 8th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Well, to India’s credit, it has half of the top software companies (at least when you look at CMM), so as far as software goes, they can take the costs down as much as possible (since supplying Windows for free is unlikely to be an option).
January 9th, 2007 at 12:20 am
Even if software prices are reduced the current amount of tax-paid for importing of hardware is still too high compared to other nations. And I suppose going for Windows shouldn’t be an option at all. Using Linux is the best option as it can be changed to suit the variety of needs of these type of laptops.
January 10th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
My first question….In What way would a 100$ piece of shit be useful for?…..How would it change educational senario?………im skeptical…
January 10th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Well the “Peice of shit” which you refer to is definitely not this product as:
[quote]The rugged and low-power computers will contain flash memory instead of a hard drive and will use Linux as their operating system.[1] Mobile ad-hoc networking will be used to allow many machines Internet access from one connection.[/quote]
And the “piece of shit” uses a modified version of Fedora Core OS. So it will run most of the stuff needed by any school kid for his school work. It also includes a custom made browser using the Gecko engine.If you want to play games on it you better buy something else as its aimed for kids and school work.
You sound more less like Bill Gates now.
January 10th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I think it has its own neat OS than Fedora Core mainly involved in it… Look here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_Instructions
Site also has the image for download and emulation on QEmu
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images_for_emulation
January 12th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
[...] Karthik voices his views on the OLPC 100$ Laptops. I personally think it isn’t really worthwhile as of now. Food to the poor is much more better. But yeah education does help either way… [...]
January 13th, 2007 at 3:48 am
[...] Karthik voices his views on the OLPC 100$ Laptops. I personally think it isn’t really worthwhile as of now. Food to the poor is much more better. But yeah education does help either way… [...]
January 14th, 2007 at 12:49 am
he he well…probably cos i don’t have any experience with Open source OS..lets see how the project goes…