Sunday, July 20, 2008
Great Indian IT and A Simple Indian Computer
"Bangalore IT.com conference, 1998: A group of IT industry professionals and professors discussed the idea of a computer that has relevance and is affordable to the common man. It should have applications that would benefit users in smaller town and even villages. It should bring information to them in their own language and with an interface that would make it easy to use."
Six years ago, the Simputer was the biggest story to come out of the Indian IT industry.It was to be the first time that a computing product would be completely indigenously developed and marketed. What made the whole idea sweeter was that it would be a product that would take computing to the very interiors of India." It has a special role in the third world because it ensures that illiteracy is no longer a barrier to handling a computer." -brags its official website.It would have been a 'personal computer' costing less than half the price of the conventional desktop available in the market.The promises were many.But how far has the Simputer come since then?[Apart from giving me the title "IT Kid of 2004" (iBrag :-P)for its promotion strategy and working out a blueprint for its integration with NLP Project and support for multiple platforms, and JAVA, and Jini, and blah, blah...][Please donate/support/help to revive India's most promising invention, the hand-held Simputer, that can truly take the computer revolution to the masses.]
Six years ago, the Simputer was the biggest story to come out of the Indian IT industry.It was to be the first time that a computing product would be completely indigenously developed and marketed. What made the whole idea sweeter was that it would be a product that would take computing to the very interiors of India." It has a special role in the third world because it ensures that illiteracy is no longer a barrier to handling a computer." -brags its official website.It would have been a 'personal computer' costing less than half the price of the conventional desktop available in the market.The promises were many.But how far has the Simputer come since then?[Apart from giving me the title "IT Kid of 2004" (iBrag :-P)for its promotion strategy and working out a blueprint for its integration with NLP Project and support for multiple platforms, and JAVA, and Jini, and blah, blah...][Please donate/support/help to revive India's most promising invention, the hand-held Simputer, that can truly take the computer revolution to the masses.]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It is definately the lack of interest by the government authority that has led the simputer to its coffin; lack of capital is expected, and nothing had been done, at least thats what i think. The Indian IT is new and evolving, it was still in its infancy then, and the oldie goldie indian politicians could not know the difference between IT and a PC!
ReplyDeleteI have used this thing, its got a lot of juice in it (actually, it had :(
ReplyDeleteBut now, the market if filled with cheap substitutes. Though they can never provide functionality promised by the simputer, still they pose a serious threat to the revival of the simputer.