Indian Company Shows Off Sub-$200 Laptop
A computer, a mobile one, for Rs.10,000? A Bangalore-based company on Tuesday announced the development of such a system under a project sponsored by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). It is expected to be available commercially in three months.
Vinay L. Deshpande, chairman and chief executive officer of Encore Software, told a press conference the system would have the essential features of a conventional personal computer: everyday applications such as word processing, spreadsheet, personal information manager, e-mail and web-browser. It will play music and movies, have text-to-speech conversion facility and built-in local-language support. For now, Kannada, Hindi, and Marathi; work is in progress on Tamil and Telugu. It will weigh 500 gm and be compact. It can be synchronised with a regular PC, "considering that it [a PC] cannot be wished away.''
It will have no hard disk but will have built-in memory and facility to plug in memory cards for any storage over and above that provided for in the built-in memory. It will not have games. High-speed computing is ruled out. The reasoning is that "while adding to the cost, these are of no use to many users.''
