Hi, A project that I have been tracking for over three years has finally made it to market in a big way. That is India's Simputer project (www.simputer.org)
The Simputer is a design for a low-cost, PDA-like computer that could be shared among users. Why do I say "PDA-like"? While most PDAs can really be used by only one person, the Simputer has two USB ports as well as a smart card interface and a 4-pin serial interface. It can handle wireless USB attachments, and comes in both a lower-cost monochrome screen and a higher-cost color screen. It uses a low-power, but high speed StrongARM processor, and the operating system is Linux. You could also hook on lots of other peripherals to the USB ports (one is master/slave and one is master), such as disks and other networking devices. The system was designed for use not only by English speaking people, but people who write in Hindu or Kannada. It also has an application that allows you to capture handwriting, so you can just write in any language. For the illiterate, there is also a text-to-speech for Hindi and Kannada, to allow illiterate people to use the Simputer. Illiterate people are often not stupid, they just can not read. And for them to communicate back, the Simputer has a built-in microphone and speaker. Most interesting is that the Simputer was designed as a project by universities and people who wanted to do "good things", so the hardware design is readily available, and the Linux OS is "pure" GPL, with no hidden "stuff". Finally, the vision for this "PDA-like" device was that it would be shared among the people of a village or area, with each villager having their own flash memory data stick to hold their own data, and just borrowing the "PDA" when they needed to use it. You can see the finished product at: http://www.amidasimputer.com/ and it was announced only two days ago. The current costs (300 USD for the monochrome and 480 USD for the color version) is a bit expensive if you think of it as a PDA, but two items: o it is based on a manufacturing run of 50,000 units, and could come down considerably in higher volumes o this is not really a PDA, but a complete computer system, and its costs could be shared Take a look at it, and let me know what you think. I congratulate the team that designed, built, and brought this to market. maddog -- Jon "maddog" Hall Executive Director Linux International(R) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 80 Amherst St. Voice: +1.603.672.4557 Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A. WWW: http://www.li.org Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association (R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. (R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used pursuant to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis (R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and other countries. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
