NEW DELHI India has come up with the world's cheapest "laptop," a touch-screen computing device that costs $35.India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal this week unveiled the low-cost computing device that is designed for students, saying his department had started talks with global manufacturers to start mass production. "We have reached a (developmental) stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything," he told a news conference.He said the touchscreen gadget was 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. 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. The device was developed by research teams at India's premier technological institutes, the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science.India 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 but studies have shown many students can barely read or write and most state-run schools have inadequate facilities.

(Reporting by Reuters Television, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)Do you remember when One Laptop Per Child called its XO the "$100 laptop"? Patio Furniture Rehab LocationAnd when it was really $130, $147, or $200 per laptop? Cheap Furniture Removals Central CoastDid you also notice they've finally dropped price from the description of their program? Outdoor Furniture WgtnTimely, I say, since the 4P Computing market has just eclipsed OLPC in low-cost leadership. Say hello to the Impulse NPX-9000, what Liliputing is calling the world's cheapest laptop at USD $130.00 Now, like OLPC, there is a minimum order amount, just 100 laptops. Also, like OLPC, the price is FOB Shenzhen. But unlike OLPC's Give Many program, I don’t see a ambiguous 2-6 month shipping window or the need for buyers to band together just to get a respectable order volume.

I do see some respectable laptop specifications that give the XO yet another 4PC competitor: SPECIFICATIONS:400 MHz MIPS CPU7" Analog Screen128 MB SDRAM1 GB Flash Memory80 Key English Keyboard & Touch PadLinux O.S.Connectors: SD Card Slot, VGA Port, USB x 3, Mini USB, Microphone and Earphone JackAC Adaptor and AccessoriesExternal USB LAN or 802.11g WiFi dongle (optional)INCLUDED APPLICATIONS:Excel File Viewer and EditorWord File Viewer and EditorInternet BrowserMedia PlayerFlash ViewerO-Image Photo ViewerTyping - Word ProcessorDrawpad - Paint ApplicationPointer ApplicationNot bad for $130 in orders of 100 or moreAnd just what a few schools would want to order too. XO Tablets for Sale Oh, come on Michael. Do you really think anything that was said on OLPC News would have had much …Comment on Goodbye One Laptop per Child I bought 2 "Tablets OLPC." I had to return because the two did not work. Comment on The XO Tablet - A First Impression in 750 Words I have one question to sir?

-1 why XO Tablet children play OK but when h …Comment on Guest Post: My XO Tablet Technical Review and First Impressions Je suis bien d'accord avec vous. Je travaille depuis 4 ans dans un petit … You just follow the same route upstream how you got the 2XO Tablets? How did you get them? � quelle adresse envoyer mes deux XOTablet qui ne fonctionnent pas? At what address to s … That's called "Death on arrivals". That's why there's always some additio … What is a shelf XO? If you tell me what did you buy and from whom, perhaps I will have a suggest … Voici mon message en fran�ais... Je viens d'acheter 2 tablettes XO. I just bought 2 shelves XO. Both tablets are not working. One does not start and the other touch … OLPC is not death; this One Laptop per Child San Francisco (OLPC-SF) June 21, 2014 Meeting a … Laptop & Printer COMPUTERSLaptops Exclude Out of Stock Acer Asus Dell HP IBall Lenovo Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 8

Intel Core i7 Intel Core i5 Intel Core i3 Pentium Quad Core Atom Quad Core APU Quad Core Pentium Dual Core Celeron Dual Core APU Dual Core 2 TB 1 TB 500 GB 256 GB 32 GB 10(25.4cm)-12(30.48cm) 13 (33.02 cm) - 15 (38.1 cm) 16 GB 6 GB 2 GB 4 GB 8 GB Price(Low to High ) We make powerful computers to help you do more, go further, and unleash your potential.At the World Summit on the Information Society two weeks ago, MIT's Nicholas Negroponte unveiled the laptop he believes will digitize the developing world. The cute green computer sports a WiFi card, a 500 MHz processor, a 1 gigabyte flash drive, and a novel power source—a 6-inch hand crank that juts out from the side. It will run free, open-source software, most likely some derivation of Linux. All of this for the low, low price of just $100. Negroponte promises that bringing cheap laptops to countries like Brazil, Thailand, and Egypt will help "children to 'learn learning' through independent interaction and exploration."

That might be true, but this green machine won't be the computer to do it, no matter how much Kofi Annan and the international press fawn over it.The $100 laptop is a huckster's gambit—poorly thought out, overly ambitious, and too sexy to be true. The $100 price point is the obvious grabber—Negroponte's computer wouldn't make it out of the back of the business section if it cost $499. But is it possible to build such a computer so cheaply? Negroponte says on his site that the screen alone costs $35. A 1 gig flash drive retails for around $70, a WiFi card for at least $25, the RAM perhaps $50, and the hand crank who knows how much. Add in labor, distribution, service, and maintenance costs, and you're over $100 by a couple hundred dollars. If you're willing to assume that MIT can somehow keep the cost at or near the century mark, there's still the question of who will support the computers (and who will pay for that support). When the computers are already in India, there's nowhere to outsource the help desk.

Negroponte claims he won't have a problem hitting the $100 mark because he's only selling to government buyers who purchase a minimum of 1 million computers. But it doesn't seem likely that any client will buy a single computer, much less a million, until they're convinced the computer will work and be as cheap as advertised. Besides, does the Thai Ministry of Education really have a couple hundred million dollars sitting around? According to the MIT Web site, "[m]anufacturing will begin when 5 to 10 million machines have been ordered and paid for in advance." Don't wait around for those conveyor belts to start cranking. What Negroponte doesn't want Brazil, Thailand, and his other clients to know is that this isn't the first time a $100 computer has briefly seduced the press. Just like the little green laptop, each of these machines came with a gigantic catch. In 2000, a now-defunct Texas company called Netpliance marketed a $99 all-in-one computer called the i-opener. You also had to buy their Internet service for around $20 per month.

After a series of shipping delays, price increases, and customer complaints, Netpliance stopped selling the i-opener in January 2001. A few months later, the company settled a Federal Trade Commission complaint that they used deceptive advertising to hide the machine's true cost. In 2001, a group of computer scientists in Bangalore, India, developed the Simputer. It was supposed to be a cheap (around $200), robust computer for India's rural poor. But according to the Associated Press, the brains behind the Simputer have sold only 4,000 of an expected 50,000 units in 2004 and 2005. In addition, only about 10 percent of Simputer buyers live in rural areas. Probably because they have more important things to do than write e-mail. There's no reason to think that Negroponte's computer will win wider acceptance in the Third World. The fact that each laptop comes with a built-in WiFi card won't be of much use if there isn't a WiFi access point nearby. How many access points do you think there are in rural Egypt?

So, what's a better way to do this? Negroponte should check out some of his competition in the low-end computer market. Dell will sell you a new laptop with a DVD player and a WiFi card for about $500. Linspire has been selling their Linux-based desktops at places like Wal-Mart for $300 for a couple of years now. AMD's Personal Internet Communicator, which retails for $300 (or $190 at Radio Shack after rebate), runs Windows CE and is compatible with existing Microsoft products like Word and Excel. (Both the Linspire and the AMD machines are sold without monitors.) There's also an American company that's already making a profit on a $100 machine—the Palm Z22. Sure, the Palm PDA doesn't have WiFi, but you can use it to take notes and it has a color screen. The point is that there remains a trade-off for price and functionality. Negroponte can't have it both ways. There is a much better way to build a computer that can serve the rural poor, if you're willing to pay for it.