The equipment costs just $ 35 and its developers plan to reduce the value to $ 10.
The Minister of Human Resource Development of India, Kapil Sibal, introduced this week the low-cost machine designed for students, and said his ministry began negotiations with global manufacturers to start mass production.
“We have reached a stage (of development) that today, the motherboard, the chip, processor, connectivity, all cumulatively cost about $ 35, including memory, screen, everything,” said Sibal in a press conference.
He noted that the computer has Internet browsers, a reader of PDF files and computer support for videoconferencing, but its hardware was created with sufficient flexibility to incorporate new components according to user needs.
Sibal said that the computer that operates on Linux OS would be introduced in higher education institutions starting on 2011, but that would seek to further reduce its price, first to $ 20 and finally to $ 10.
The device was developed by research teams in the top two technology institutes in India, the Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Science.
India spends about 3 percent of its yearly budget in education and has improved its literacy rates above 64 percent of its population of 1.200 million.
However, some reports have shown that many students have difficulty reading or writing, and most schools have inadequate facilities state.
I hope giant companies like HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc help to develop this device to education can be given with ease in all the world.
Deroba
