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| Example of an inexpensive PC: A $138 touchscreen PC |
India has come up with the world's cheapest "laptop," a touch-screen computing device (a tablet of the size of a diary) that costs $35. In Indian Rupees this comes out to be Rs 1500. A very very affordable price for a country that spends about three percent of its annual budget on school education and has improved its literacy rates to over 64 percent of its 1.2 billion population.Developed by research teams at India's premier technological institutes, the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science the device is a touchscreen tablet PC running on Linux (an operating system just like Windows, only difference being Linux is free) packed with Internet browsers, PDF reader and video conferencing facilities but its hardware was created with sufficient flexibility to incorporate new components according to user requirement. In short, the device provides networking and multimedia consumption capabilities.
According to India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, the low-cost computing device is designed for students, with his department had already started talks with global manufacturers to start mass production. He said the Sibal said the Linux based computing device was expected to be introduced to higher education institutions from 2011 but the aim was to drop the price further to $20 and ultimately to $10. --------
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