Cheaper than a steak dinner

Kapil Sibal showed off a cheap slate in a press conference. The Guardian carries a report:

India has developed the world’s cheapest laptop – a touchscreen device which resembles Apple’s wildly popular iPad but will cost just £23.

The prototype was unveiled today by Kapil Sibal, the country’s human resource development minister, who said 110 million Indian schoolchildren would be the first recipients.

Then, from next year, the device – designed to bridge the digital divide and boost India’s economy – will become available to students in higher education.

Sibal said: “The solutions for tomorrow will emerge from India. We have reached a stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35 [£23], including memory, display, everything.”

Past low-cost technologies produced by the country include the £1,450 Tata Nano car and a mobile phone costing less than £11. The iPad retails at about £429 in the UK – 18 times the cost of the Indian laptop.

The tablet computer, developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalooru, will eventually be made available to the public. It will run on an open source Linux operating system with Open Office software and can be powered by solar panel or batteries as well as mains electricity. It will have no hard drive but users will have access to a USB port, 2GB of memory and a video-conferencing facility, internet browsing.