There has been increasing excitement over India’s commitment to developing and producing a $10 laptop in the past few months. Some say it couldn’t be done, while others remained sceptically hopeful. It turns out the former were correct because not only does India’s $10 laptop cost $30, it’s not even really a laptop. Damn.

The plans for a $10 laptop first leaked out of India last July, and most people laughed it off as a preposterous idea. That negative reaction was somewhat aided by the Indian government insisting that a zero had been left out of the official announcement, and the laptop would in fact cost $100.

Then, in January, as the February 3 unveiling date was edging near, the $10 price point was once again mentioned in official circles. This was the target price although a $20 to $30 price point was suggested as being more feasible, at least until mass production kicked in and lowered the price of the components used to build the laptop.

As it turns out, the argument as to whether a $10 laptop is even possible proved fruitless because the device has now been revealed, and it isn’t a laptop. According to India’s national newspaper, The Hindu, the $10 laptop is actually an ultra-low cost computing device.

As you can see in the picture above, the device has no screen, or keyboard, and can’t possibly be classified as a working computer. What is actually is is a storage device for educational material which can be downloaded from the Web – for an as-yet unspecified price.

In essence, India’s answer to the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project is a 10″ by 5″ 2GB drive with the ability to connect to the Internet via wireless and wired connections. And here’s the doozy – the educational material that the device downloads has to be transferred to a conventional laptop to be read and accessed, making this device completely worthless.

So why did the Indian government allow this product to be billed as a laptop for so long? We all should have guessed that a laptop was impossible to even manufacture for $10 let alone sell for that piddling amount. The whole thing now seems like a sorry mess, and it leaves kids in India and elsewhere still unable to get connected for anything less than what amounts to a small fortune for them and their families.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 6:40 am under Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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