Exactly. It's the village PC for most of the world where indoor plumbing is a luxury. An x86 version of the http://www.simputer.org/simputer/ that uses a TV for display.
-Bari
Forgive me for starting to drift offtopic.
I'm not sure I understand. The villages lacking indoor plumbing are not the customer base that I think are being targeted for broadband+PIC. I believe the target base are the 50Million or so Indians who are in the lower middle class. They have a monthly disposable income of around USD$10 so they could pay off the cost of a PIC over a year or two. These are people who are teachers, farmers, artisans, barbers, sundry shop owners ( and if I might say so, are a lovely people whom I'd someday like to help by delivering a cheaper free and open sourced based Linux solution to their computing needs ). They already have indoor plumbing, thank you very much. They typically want to use a PIC to get things like current commodity grain prices, the price of gas, exchange email and photos of their family with their relatives in the city, figure out if their politicians are doing right by them, and get educational content for their children. I think 1024x768 is fine for them. Once their kids become hackers, I'm sure they'll find a way to get better displays. :-)
From what I understand of the PIC, the output is VGA
only. The broadband provider bundles in a 15" CRT from LG-India bringing the price up to USD$250 or so.
Also, from what I've read, the simputer is more like a enhanced-PDA, ie: handheld device, rather than like a computer. From their FAQ;
# Q: Is the Simputer like a PC? A: No. The Simputer is *NOT* a personal computer. It could however be a pocket computer. # Q: Is the Simputer like a Palm? A: Again no! The Simputer is much more powerful than a Palm. For example, in terms of screen size (320x240), memory capabilities (32MB RAM) and the OS (GNU/Linux).
Ramesh
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