You know that $10 Sakshat laptop that Indian officials unveiled yesterday? Yeah, it’s not a laptop. I’ve been reading conflicting information about this device for the past few months. Sometimes it’s supposed to cost $10, sometimes $100. And sometimes it’s called a laptop while other times it had been referred to as a portable computer, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as a laptop.
Now that the first image of the device has popped up online, the picture is becoming a bit more clear. As I predicted last week, there’s no keyboard or CPU. The box is a portable device that’s about 10 inches by 5 inches, and which can store information. You can access that info from a full fledged computer. It sounds to me like this is a glorified USB flash drive, but it’s also supposed to be able to let users connect to the computer, so I’m guessing there’s some sort of processor in there.
The price right now is being pegged at closer to $30 than $10, but the goal is to bring the cost down so that the Sakshat doesn’t cost much more than a textbook. You know, unless you also want to plug in a monitor and keyboard.