Am I glad to hear this; it was high time India jumped on the low-cost tablet and its happened!
Kapil Sibal announced it, and described it as a dream project. The tablet is intended for children from the primary to university level. With a package pricing approaching 35 USD, and finally to cost even less, it seems economical as well.
In a tablet form-factor and using an unspecified variant of Linux (that some have said might be Android), the cost should remain low while offering a wide range of functionality. The device is said to be support video conferencing, viewing a wide selection of video and image files, word processing, de/compressing files, printing with CUPS, full Internet browsing with Javascript and Flash, wireless communications, and remote device management. That’s a lot of features for a device that’s intended to sell for as low as 35 USD.
The technical specification is still not clearly known at this time, but from looking at the pictures and the video (embedded below) it seems it’ll have a 7” color touch screen, 2 gigs of storage, WiFi, Ethernet, and very minimal power consumption (meaning a long battery life, something very necessary in India).
This is just a prototype and there’s a long way to go before the product is available to students. The Indian government wants to put the tablet into production by 2011, but hasn’t yet found partners to build it. I’ll be watching and would love to get my hands on one of these devices when they’re out in the market.
