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By Chris Meadows

Found on Slashdot: India is soon to unveil the prototype of its 500-rupee ($10) "nano laptop." According to the Indian secretary for higher education, “At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down.” Not much is known about the capabilities or stats of this device. Slashdot claims "it will be small and portable, will feature Wi-Fi, LAN, and expandable memory, and will operate on 2 watts of power." However, the article to which they link in the statement does not contain anything substantiating it.

The $10 computer is being released as part of a mission to further higher education within India.

The mission launch would also see demonstration of e-classroom, virtual laboratory and a better ‘Sakshat’ portal that was launched more than two years ago. Sources also said that the ministry has entered into an agreement with four publishers — Macmillan, Tata McGraw Hill, Prentice-Hall and Vikas Publishing — to upload their textbooks on ‘Sakshat’. Five per cent of these books can be accessed free.

It is interesting to note that the price for the device is definitely given as the equivalent of $10 rather than the $100 to which it was "corrected" shortly after the initial announcement. The article does not mention whether it will be available outside of India.

It is hard to imagine anything like a laptop, or even a PDA, being made to sell at the equivalent of $10. Will it be suitable for reading e-books? Will it be available for purchase? Will the technology used in making it be available to other companies so we might perhaps see a $50 to $100 device with more durability and capabilities? It will be interesting to find out.

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