The OLPC project aimed to build a laptop that could be sold to third world countries for the mere price of 100$, alas it has been unable to achieve its goal as an OLPC costs 175$ as of today. This could be an indication for that it is more or less impossible to build such a cheap computer, but on the other hand there are others who are willing to give it another shot. The Indian ministry of Human Resources has launched its plan for designing a laptop costing only 10$. What may sound like an April’s fools joke is a real project which has already started and HDR has received two suggestions where one of them costs a mere 47$ to make, a price that is expected to be even lower at larger production volumes.
”The two designs with the ministry are from a final year engineering student of Vellore Institute of Technology and a researcher from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.”
Exactly how they will achieve this remains to be seen, but even if the initial goal will be missed by a few dollars or so we have to admire the initiative.
