No Lap Left Behind

Apparently the Indian goverment is learning from President Bush.

They have come up with a "No Lap left Behind" policy.

A laptop on every lap, they said and to top things off, the thing was supposed to cost 10 bucks (500 Indian Rupees)!

There has been a lot of hoopla around this over the years.

The most common reasoning out there was that it would still cost 100 bucks to make, but it could be sold by the government for 10 bucks. Well cost and price are two different things, especially when regulated by a government.. any government! You only need to look at ethanol based fuels and cars which claim to use ethanol based fuels (also) in the US to understand this!

Now where were we? Ah, the laps, sorry.. laptops!

Let us for a moment say this thingy does get called a Laptop.

It should have

a. a processor (at least the same thing in a digital watch or a basic electronic calculator)
b. some memory (lets say they have no hard drive to store info and that is an extra)
c. a keyboard to communicate to the outside world (no mice required)
d. a monitor of some sort
e. a power source (or module if it runs on batteries)
f. an outer plastic case to hold all these together as opposed to a ziploc bag

if you have to divvy up these 6 things under 10$, you are looking at some amazing manufacturing!

Truly amazing, state of the art, cost effective manufacturing as well as state of the art distribution which is free or nearly free!

Obviously a billion laps would need to be serviced here and that means cartons and cartons of laptop devices need to be shipped and transported and distributed and that should all be included in the ten buck cost!

Plus you need top {bolly,tolly,kolly}U(Wood) actresses, former desi Miss Worlds, Universe, etc. posing with "tzis device" to make it appeal to the masses.

Somehow I feel my brother is being cheated. The government officials in India are smoking some high quality pot and they are not sharing it with the tax paying people!

$ 40, very much possible. $30 is pushing it with today's manufacturing! I am serious here. You can get a plastic case, working keyboard, a simple processor that possibly does basic text editing, calculator, clock, etc. etc. a pixelized monitor without color, 128MB memory , batteries sold separately device for 40 bucks including distribution, advertising etc.

My BIL got Jr. a laptop that comes close, and it cost $50 and it is pretty educational!

In a world where a langot costs 10-15 rupees and a VIP brief for that same lap, goes for 50, a laptop at 500 rupees is too good to be true!

Who knows, maybe some day there will be a ten dollar laptop, for real!?!


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