Move Over, OLPC. India Creates 10 Dollar Laptop

That’s right, One Laptop per Child. Suck it. For the price of two Subway Footlong Subs, you can get a laptop made by the same people who brought you the world’s cheapest car at £1,420, the Tata, and the world’s cheapest phone.  I’m not sure what type of technology will comprise the world’s cheapest computing device, but I think it may entail Crayola Inputs.

From TimesOnline here:

India is poised to unveil the ultimate in credit-crunch computing: a 500 rupee (£7) laptop.

A government-developed prototype, due to be shown for the first time tomorrow, will mark the most ambitious attempt yet to bring computers to the developing world and to bridge the “digital divide” between rich and poor.

It is also the latest example of ultra-cheap engineering to emerge from the sub-continent. India has already given the world a 100,000 rupee (£1,420) car, the Tata Nano, and a super-basic £10 phone — goods that are now expected to find favour among relatively affluent Westerners as the global economic downturn bites.

However, the launch of a viable computer that costs less than most paperback books would herald a startling new era in thrifty manufacturing. The Indian laptop, which has been on the drawing board for at least three years, will be the centre of attention at the launch of India’s new National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, a scheme to boost learning in rural areas through the internet.

It comes as an answer to the One Laptop per Child project (OLPC) led by Nicholas Negraponte, the American scientist, which set out to produce a computer for $100. The US venture ran into problems when large companies including Intel, the biggest chip manufacturer, refused to co-operate. As a result, the OLPC laptop will cost closer to $200.

Of course Negraponte said there is no effing way the Indians can do this successfully because he himself has failed at every step of his own project to waste a billion dollars by throwing it away on crappy handcranked laptops.

But even if the Indian initiative ends up costing quadruple the price, it may still succeed because they are not trying to shove it down the throats of the world’s poorest children.  They are going to allow the free market drive the demand.  And that demand will ultimately sound the death knell of the stupid OLPC program.  See my previous stories on OLPC here, here and here.