$10 Laptop...can the Indians do it?

[Martial Arts Man]

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/ind...


If this is possible, which the article writer believes not to be the case, what effect will such a machine have on the world?

I guess the more important thing is; can it really be done?


Over to you, PH.


MAM

[tinman0]

Martial Arts Man said:

I guess the more important thing is; can it really be done?

Nope.

[Hedders]

I don't know about the Indians but the kids round here can get you one for that.

[spikeyhead]

Tehy've managed to get a monile phoen down to £10. That means there's a long long way to go to get a laptop for even less.

[oilandwater]

spikeyhead said:

Tehy've managed to get a monile phoen down to £10. That means there's a long long way to go to get a laptop for even less.

what?

[buggalugs]

Don't think so, at least not something that would be recognisable to you and me as a laptop.

[Scuffers]

spikeyhead said:

Tehy've managed to get a monile phoen down to £10. That means there's a long long way to go to get a laptop for even less.

err... no they haven't

it's called subsidised

[muley]

I reckon it's possible - just a bunch of sand and plastic. IIRC a little while ago a dvd player was about £1 as it left a Chinese factory gate ...

[Darkslider]

Well you can buy a mobile phone in Argos for £4.99?

[spikeyhead]

Scuffers said:

spikeyhead said:

They've managed to get a mobile phone down to £10. That means there's a long long way to go to get a laptop for even less.

err... no they haven't

it's called subsidised

Err, yes they can. was in the article, I can well believe that you can make a mobile for £10. I know how much a basic Nokia was costing ten years ago and electronics costs have come a long way down since then.

[tinman0]

spikeyhead said:

Err, yes they can. was in the article, I can well believe that you can make a mobile for £10. I know how much a basic Nokia was costing ten years ago and electronics costs have come a long way down since then.

there is a big difference between a mobile and a laptop.

if none of the big manufacturers can sell a Netbook for under £200 with a huge amount of experience behind them, if OLPC can't do a machine for under $200 and they are getting huge amounts of IP very cheaply, how will India suddenly manage a machine for £10?

unless as another poster says that it will be a machine that we wouldn't recognize as a laptop. i'm figuring its something like a large calculator with a basic language on it.

[spikeyhead]

tinman0 said:

spikeyhead said:

Err, yes they can. was in the article, I can well believe that you can make a mobile for £10. I know how much a basic Nokia was costing ten years ago and electronics costs have come a long way down since then.

there is a big difference between a mobile and a laptop.

I refer the responder to my previous (typo ridden) statement.

[bigTee]

Scuffers said:

spikeyhead said:

Tehy've managed to get a monile phoen down to £10. That means there's a long long way to go to get a laptop for even less.

err... no they haven't

it's called subsidised

CPW did a PAYG phone for £2.49 before xmas

[razbox]

oilandwater said:

spikeyhead said:

Tehy've managed to get a monile phoen down to £10. That means there's a long long way to go to get a laptop for even less.

what?

I think he was typing on one of those $10 phones...

[Pesty]

ICs' are cheaper these days but the component costs of the silicone alone will be more than that. Batteries,screen, plastics etc etc then you have to make the bloody thing.
Even paying peanuts you would have to make them in huge huge numbers to get the costs low as possible. What about investment in machinery? SMT Placement machines and ICT rigs are not cheap and they would need lines and lines of them. Even if the Indian government writes of the investment I don;t think so.

Not a chance

[Frik]

tinman0 said:

if none of the big manufacturers can sell a Netbook for under £200 with a huge amount of experience behind them, if OLPC can't do a machine for under $200 and they are getting huge amounts of IP very cheaply, how will India suddenly manage a machine for £10?

I'm writing this message on a Acer netbook I paid the princely sum of £150 for. Admittedly that's still 15 times the price but then it begs the question what precisely would you get for your £10?

[qube_TA]

You could make a laptop for $10 without question but would it be comparable to other laptops currently available, would it run the same operating systems and software? Certainly not.

If they bought the existing components like the Intel CPU, the GFX, system architecture etc and assembled it, it would be too expensive so they'd either have to reverse-engineer existing PC's and recreate them, a huge and expensive task, or they'd have to come up with something new but then they'd need someone to port Windows, Linux or MacOS to it, which is unlikely to happen.

[tinman0]

Frik said:

tinman0 said:

if none of the big manufacturers can sell a Netbook for under £200 with a huge amount of experience behind them, if OLPC can't do a machine for under $200 and they are getting huge amounts of IP very cheaply, how will India suddenly manage a machine for £10?

I'm writing this message on a Acer netbook I paid the princely sum of £150 for. Admittedly that's still 15 times the price but then it begs the question what precisely would you get for your £10?

Not a lot. I can't see this is possible unless its subsidized or IP is being ripped off, and its still a tiny device.

If the market could create a £10 notebook, it have been done by now.

[cs02rm0]

Just a matter of time.

[spikeyhead]

razbox said:

oilandwater said:

spikeyhead said:

Tehy've managed to get a monile phoen down to £10. That means there's a long long way to go to get a laptop for even less.

what?

I think he was typing on one of those $10 phones...

I'm blaming the new keyboard on my new £400 desktop.

The killer on the laptop is the screen technology. There's enough processing in a gsm phone to outpower a 486 and for many many applicatinos then that's enough, providing the operating system isn't resource hungry.