The $20 dollar laptop was announced in India yesterday by the Government The Indian Institute of Science working with the Government's Semiconductor Complex and the Vellore Institute of Technology but skepticism was high with full details still remaining vague.
The laptop known as Sakshat which means 'before your eyes' has 2GB of expandable memory, Wi-Fi, Ethernet and low power consumption of 2 watts, compared with 20-30 watts for a typical laptop today. That puts it nearer to bicycle lighting and mobile phones - still tough for energy harvesting, though bicycle dynamos are a success.
Officials have stated that they believe the laptop will be available in 6 months at an incredibly low price of $20 and are even suggesting that as they are mass produced the price could drop further by 50%.
Many industry experts believe this is unlikely and that the computer will be nothing more than an elaborate calculator - it's difficult to comment as at the unveiling nothing was shown and further details are still unavailable.
Its not clear what subsidies will be offered by the Indian Government but it is believed they will extend computer infrastructure and connectivity to 18000 colleges and universities with the aim of providing an e-learning approach - some publishers have offered to upload there text books for free.
The highly publicised OLPC project (one laptop per child) in the USA at MIT has struggled to keep costs low for laptops intended for children in developing countries. Production costs in 2007 were around $188 per machine for the XO-1 - nearly double what they hoped to achieve. Now they are working on an updated version which the organisation hopes to mass produce at a cost of $75. So far there has been little use of printed electronics. Energy harvesting by ripcord - electrodynamics - and by photovoltaics are being considered but it will be challenging to provide all power in this way until the power requirement comes down. Perhaps the photovoltaics could be tightly rollable printed versions, to get adequate area.
One of the main problems with the cost is that they have not been able to mass produce in the numbers required. OLPC believe that because the system runs on Linux based Sugar software rather than windows, this has hindered sales because governments aren't familiar with the software and are concerned that children will be compromised in the future.
"It's like the Apple laptops, which companies didn't buy because they didn't run Windows. Now they do run Windows, they're more widely purchased and used - it got them into the office" said Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC founder recently.
For wider appeal the new XO-2 dual boot version will run on Microsoft windows XP as well as Linux and will have a dual screen that can be held like a book or turned around with one of the screens being used as a keyboard.
The earlier XO-1 was offered to the Indian government but they declined as they feared hidden additional costs.
There has been a hint that the hardware costs for the Sakshat laptop may be subsidized by the Indian Government - time will tell.
For more attend Printed Electronics Europe 2009.
Also read earlier articles Printed Electronics in India; Super Cheap Laptops for the Third World and Intel USA quits third world laptop project.
