The $35 Tablet
Posted on 24. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in News
Have you heard about the tablet that has been developed in India for educational purposes that costs $35? Kapil Sabil, who works for the Indian government’s human resource ministry, showed off a prototype recently and even speculated that the device could cost $10 in a short time as hardware costs decline.
News organizations are reporting this as a laptop; the reality is that this device looks like a tablet. It has no keyboard, doesn’t fold and has a touchscreen. How can that be described as a laptop?
More and more, cloud computing makes hardware a commodity that will matter less than the platform that a device runs on. This comes as Intel recently posted its best quarter ever as companies purchase more expensive servers to handle increased processing that is done remotely now more than ever.
Witness the increasingly short lifespan of the mini-computers that we all carry around called smartphones. Indeed, it almost seems surprising to me that phones are given one-word names: at some point this convention for naming is going to run out of creative ideas there are so many products coming out.
Nevertheless, this Indian device has one purpose: to increase education and literacy rates in India. Would you be surprised to hear that this gadget runs Linux, has a web browser and can allow users to read PDF files?
Sounds like a Chrome OS computer to me.
6 Responses to “The $35 Tablet”
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chrome tips
24. Jul, 2010
this is almost unbelievable ….
btw, Kapil Sibal is India’s minister for HR ..
Tweets that mention The $35 Tablet | thechromesource - Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Resources -- Topsy.com
24. Jul, 2010
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Peter Vander Auwera, thechromesource. thechromesource said: The $35 Tablet: Have you heard about the tablet that has been developed in India for educational purposes that cos… http://bit.ly/aocIrl [...]
chrome tips
25. Jul, 2010
looks like it runs android ..
I have posted it on my personal blog
offlineblog.net
Kevin Rodrigues
25. Jul, 2010
That is a good thing. But I don’t think the Indian in villages can even afford $35. And the electricity for it. It still cannot beat the paper textbooks when it comes to education in India.
The $35 Tablet | TechMonkeyMagic
25. Jul, 2010
[...] Source:http://www.thechromesource.com/the-35-tablet/ [...]
Daniel Cawrey
25. Jul, 2010
Kevin:
You have a point with the electricity issue. But still, you have to admit this is an excellent way to get computing devices into more people’s hands, especially if the operating system for it is free.