A misplaced dream

The low cost revolution was probably started two decades ago by Maruti with
its common man's car, the Maruti 800. It however became a status symbol in those
days of Ambassadors

and Premier Padminis, and never fully lived up to its low cost tag as it turned
out to be much more expensive and out of reach for the real common man. From
Maruti 800 to Tata Nano, India has seen many experiments in the low cost high
value products segment-some lived for a while and others just fizzled out, while
a Nano is undergoing lots of tribulations even before seeing the light of day.
None of these however translated into mass market success. It's the same story
with low cost IT products, though most of these have proved to be either
non-starters or complete duds.

Laptop, or low-cost computing?

Anything low cost always captures everybody's mind-the mainstream media goes
all out to praise it as the innovation never seen before, only to dub it as a
'joke' the next day when the novelty weans off and the 'reality' gets exposed.
This is what exactly happened when a 'computing device' (some called it a
laptop) built by the Vellore Institute of Technology with help from IIT Chennai,
IISC Bangalore UGC and MHRD got the attention for all the wrong reasons.

The device looks like a removable storage drive that can be connected to another device and store content. With prices of thumb drives crashing, what exactly this device can be used for remains to be seen

When the computing device was launched in a function in Tirupati, many found
it hard to believe the claims by the developers and the government ostensibly
supporting those claims. What added to the speculation was the inability of the
concerned authorities to divulge the device ecosystem like RAM, type of screen
and the keypad. As of now the device looks like a removable storage drive that
can be connected to another device like a notebook and store content. With
prices of thumb drives crashing, what exactly this device can be used for
remains to be seen.

Notwithstanding the hype and impracticality surrounding the whole episode,
the attempt itself is seen by some as an effort in creating proof of concept,
even though it might be lagging in many aspects. However many in the industry
feel that it is practically impossible to launch a notebook for $10-as it is
totally not viable, even at subsidized costs.

At the moment the authorities are pretty mum about the $10 computing device
and confusion still remains on its exact form factor and the hardware ecosystem.
This is not the first time that a low cost computing device has attracted so
much attention. But the earlier initiatives were much more practical and some
had seen some amount of commercial success. For instance Intel's Classmate
laptops were the first to bring laptops at sub $300 price points and instances
such as the MIT's OLPC initiative. While PC vendors refused to comment on the
$10 'laptop', they feel that low cost computing is kind of a misnomer and cannot
be achieved with products that are not functional for basic applications. Many
in the industry also wonder what kind of functionality these kind of devices can
offer. As of now it looks like the $10 laptop is just a peripheral device and
not a device with processing capabilities.

Source: dataquest