£7 laptop announced

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 4 Feb 2009 at 08:50

The Indian Government has announced that it will be shipping a laptop that costs only £7 within six months.

UPDATE: £7 laptop turns out to be nothing of the sort

The laptop, known as Sakshat, which translates as "before your eyes", is part of the country's national education drive. To that end the government will ship the laptop to schools with portions of textbooks already loaded thanks to a series of pioneering deals with publishers.

Aside from the price tag, little else is known about the machine. Rumours suggest it will feature 2GB of storage, Wi-Fi, Ethernet and require only 2 watts of power to run. The processor, RAM and screen size are being kept under wraps.

The laptop has been developed by India's Institutes of Technology in Bangalore and Madras after the government rejected the OLPC laptop as too expensive.

Early production models reportedly cost £14, but RP Agarwal, a civil servant for Indian higher education, claims that "with mass production the cost is bound to come down."

However, critics are already circling the laptop with opposition parties claiming the announcement is a publicity stunt and little more than "a souped up calculator".