Product Central
Dispatches from the Reviews Editor's desk
Wednesday 4 February 2009, 3:28 PM
That $20 (or $10, or $30) laptop
For a start, it doesn't appear to be a laptop at all, if the picture relayed by Gizmodo today is anything to go by. Instead, it seems to be a small (10in. by 5in.) 'storage device' with a bunch of wires emerging from it. Two gigabytes of storage capacity have been touted, along with Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity. That's it, basically. Oh, and 'Sakshat' may not refer to the device at all, but to a related educational web site. Confused yet?
Few of the multitude of stories have failed to compare and contrast this Indian device with Nicholas Negroponte's troubled OLPC project and its XO laptop (originally planned to cost $100, but still well north of that figure). Pundits have furrowed their brows pondering how a laptop could be built for $20 (or so) and pronounced themselves baffled. Well, it's not a laptop, that's why.
At this point I should fulminate about vast numbers of words devoted to an obscure product about which we currently know little. But I seem to have just added another 250-odd to the total. Drat!
PreviousComments on this post
I read it as £7. I suspect that it is concievable if Sakshat refers to a 'laptop' in the same way that in some parts of india a 'car' is created utilising scrap. Look at it this way. The western world has been sending so many tonnes of electrical devices to India to be recycled along with mountains of plastics, glass etc.. What would it take for those innovative Indians to create a concept "Sakshat" which (may)mean "individual laptop reclaimed in pieces from the scrap piles of recycled machines and made whole." Voila. An economically and environmentally friendly way to manufacture cheap laptops from free components. Wish I'd thought of it over here!!!
Let's hope 'Sakshat' turns out to be economic, environmental and useful in addressing the 'digital divide' in less developed countries. There are too few facts to go on right now, but it'll be interesting to see how this 'story' develops.
