
Hands On: India’s $35 Aakash Android tablet lands in America - evo_9
http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/26/aakash-android-tablet-exclusive/
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msinghai
Not to discourage you guys, but, this tablet is horrible. I am a class X
Indian student, just got this for 2300 from the government outlet at Delhi.
Its too slow. The battery only lasts an hour or so even if it's plugged in for
5 hours. YouTube, is also way too bad. Wifi connectivity is messed up. To
switch to a new network, you have to restart the device. It feels a bit cheap
on the outside too and neither my USB Keyboard nor my external Hard disk was
compatible. I'll give it a rating of 3 out of 6.

It's basically slow with its 300mhz processor. You can easily get 600mhz tabs
at 38$ directly from the Chinese factories.

But, there is one good thing about this, which is the GPRS capability. It also
comes with 100 mb free data per month plan.

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zmmmmm
> It also comes with 100 mb free data per month plan.

If that's true then it is actually the real revolution here in my mind. For
non-entertainment purposes a tablet is just a window onto the internet. It
doesn't really matter how you get to the internet, but the minute you can your
world expands a thousand fold. Suddenly giving millions (or tens or even
hundreds of millions) of underprivileged people constant, always available
internet access is a _huge_ disruption.

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electromagnetic
That's true. I mean imagine for rural farmers how revolutionary it would be
just to go on a weather website and be able to see that it's not supposed to
frost within a couple days after they plant.

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juliano_q
Compared to the top-end devices currently available it is a mediocre device.
But it have the potential to introduce technology to an impressive amount of
people. I live in Brazil and three years ago I worked in an international team
that included three indian programmers. Only one of them had a personal
computer in his house. It is a completly different reality.

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mortenjorck
_"Many of those likely to use or own the the Aakash Tablet will never have
used a desktop computer, and it’s possible they never will."_

Not sure why, but I love concepts like this.

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nobody3141
The largest percentage of cell phone users in the world will never have used a
landline and never will.

It's a big mistake thinking that every new emerging economy has to go through
the same industrialization steps in the same way as the last one.

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jkic47
This device will allow people to lower the information differential between
city dwellers and villagers, allowing them to negotiate better prices for
their goods/services. This prototype is a great first step - let's see how
users value the final version.

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pacemkr
I know its $35 and all, but we have to contemplate the fact that it's running
a 366 MHz processor, and that used be enough to do all sorts of things.

I look at this device and think of the many levels of failed abstractions this
poor CPU chews through every time you tap the screen.

Something is terribly wrong here. Not with this device in particular. With our
abstracting complexities to create more complexities; wasting cycles away.
Sometimes I feel like throwing it all out the window and just making the
machine do what I need.

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Cherian_Abraham
Imagine what this would do to the PC sales in India? PC Sales were at 4.68
million in 2010 and it was expected to go up 22% in 2011. A significant chunk
of those potential customers will opt for a far cheaper and mobile Aakash now.
Ofcourse, there will still be some who will opt for a PC (as Aakash does not
put a significant dent in their wallets), but the Tablet does it for a lot of
people, with out having to worry about support, viruses etc.

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ido
Seeing as 4.68 million new PCs for a population of largely previously off-line
1.2b people is a very small drop in the bucket, I expect it will continue to
go up rapidly very quickly for many years to come as India gets richer and PCs
get cheaper.

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suhastech
I seriously think the Indian government is wasting money on this.

Funding projects like Rasberry Pi would have been much better. They don't even
understand what a tablet is. It's a crippled device where all you can do is
watch videos and browse the Internet on your couch. You can almost do nothing
productive with the device.

Tablet is a rich man's device. Giving that to poor people is nonsensical.

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bitwize
Does it really have a KISS-style logo on the back?

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jtchang
In many countries such as India and throughout asia people have never used a
landline. Think about this for a second. Everyone carries around cell phones
because they simply leapfrogged the infrastructure requirement for land lines.

A tablet like this is certainly going to change things. How cheap are cell
phones these days? I'm not talking about that fancy iPhone you have in your
pocket. I am talking about how much it costs to go into MetroPCS and grab a
phone off the shelf. Or possibly WalMart.

If you thought we were connected as a world before things are about to
drastically change even more.

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anmol
it could be revolutionary if it helps create a slew on android
education/entertainment apps meant for low CPU / low network tablets.

note the official poverty line in India is about $1/day and 30% of the
population is below it. These people are not worried about YouTube videos.

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mkr-hn
This could change your life if you can't get to a library and you can't afford
a normal computer. Just being able to look up how to fix a car could restore
mobility to someone who couldn't afford labor, or afford a tow to a mechanic.

That's one tiny example in a sea of little conveniences a computer affords us
that we don't usually think about. And I'm not even talking about India. There
are people in this situation in the US.

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amnigos
I hope this device provides access to internet for all students.

The big thing in education is "access to information".

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sroecker
I would guess this won't be easy in rural India.

It would be awesome if they load it up with lots of free ebooks and a decent
offline copy of wikipedia (wikidroyd) from the start.

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folkster
I wonder whether they can produce them for $35 in a massive scale or the cost
keep inflating like the OLPC

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nobody3141
The parts are pretty standard and the government can potentially buy them by
million plus they can easily line up cheap manufacturing. The OLPC was a
unique and novel design with no real momentum behind it.

The main barrier to the success of this device is that since it's a government
project at least 50% of the budget will be siphoned off into pork barrelling,
ministerial pet projects and 'consultancy fees' to close friends and relatives
of the politicians involved. Unless of course Indian politics is unlike any
other variety.

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adimitrov
India has a big problem with rampant political corruption.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India>

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nobody3141
Really who would have guessed !

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nobody3141
It's $60 retail, there are $75 retail Chinese Android 2.3 tablets - they
didn't change the world, why would this one?

Is the government going to create online courses in English and Hindi? Is it
going to have English lessons so you can access all those 'educational'
Youtube videos? Is it going to record the best elementary school teachers and
put their lessons online?

Or is it going to be another - "we put computers in schools and therefore
solved all educational problems" just like the US did with the AppleII in the
late 70s

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jk-in
Students will get this device for $35.

It is not just about courses in youtube. Quite a few courses are already
available in the educational network in India. At present, only a small
section of the students have access to these; that too, only at school. The
main objective of the government is to provide means to access these courses.

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knodi
Thats 1732.5 INR. Thats pretty good. Lower middle-class should have not
problem affording this. As it costs less then a family night out in India.

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vijayr
wait!! you are saying a family night out in India would cost more than 1700
INR? Unless you are going to a five star restaurant, I am pretty sure this is
not the case.

This would be awesome if they don't allow the cost to increase, down the road.

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juxta
I went to India last year and an average Indian restaurant meal at a non-high
end restaurant was about 200INR for 2 people.

For a group of 8-10 people it was about 1000INR to eat.

On the other hand - if i went out to Dominoes and got a medium pie which
basically only fed me - it cost 300-400INR. Quite the price difference. I
noticed that most families got the single serve pizza and split it with their
kids which cost about 50INR (that was the size of a personal pan pizza).

