Tomorrow, India will unveil a prototype of the new “Sakshat” laptop, a $20 machine that is reportedly equipped with wireless connectivity and 2GB of memory. If this laptop is indeed commercially viable — which is a big “if” given the current financial climate — the Sakshat’s bargain basement price will almost certainly undercut the $100 educational laptop initiative launched by former MIT computer scientist Nicolas Negroponte, whose One Laptop Per Child program left Indian bureaucrats a little chilly in the past.
Via Elizabeth at FP.
The Sakshat strikes me as an unfortunate name, but $20 strikes me as the right price for a simple reason: if a $200 laptop breaks (as it surely will) what family can afford their child a new one?
Update: Hoax, joke or failure?
2 Responses
A sakshat for $20!!! . . . I’ll be laughing all week. Thanks, Chris.
From the BBC article:
“Early reports of the cheap laptop suggested that it would cost only 500 rupees (£7). However, this could be a mistranslation, because transcripts of the speech, in which it was unveiled, mentioned it costing $10 (£7) but this was later corrected to $100 (£70).”
Even if it is $100, it undercuts Negroponte’s by at least $80.