Now a $10 laptop coming to reality in India !

Imagine the possibilities !

The HR ministry of India is pushing engineers to device a $10 laptop. After putting down the plan for Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop for schoolchildren, they are currently pushing engineers across India to come up with super cheap laptops. I would not have been too interested in this
news, but the fact that there are already two designs and dozens of other firms are working on the project simultaneously-including a Public sector undertaking company- Semiconductor complex.

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. 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.

As far as the design of the laptop goes, Ministry is not revealing too much due to Intellectual property rights issue. But they have gone ahead and said that the laptop will be designed based on a single board, which would make it easy to find faults and rectify it, say sources.