India brings Tablet PC for $35 only

Following TATA's NANO - the cheapest vehicle, now India is again in news for the cheapest tablet PC. Tablet PC is the smallest form of computer. The Indian Tablet PC named as Sakshat is meant for Educational purposes, mainly.

Kapil Sibal, India Human Resource Development Minister has unveiled preview with its earlier prototype available for showcase. The tablet PC will boast WiFi, and Touchscreen as main features. Considering the Hardware, Battery power and Price constraints, the device will be preloaded with Android Operating System which is increasingly gaining its popularity in handheld and mobile segments.

With its official release date in 2011, the government hopes to further reduce the price to $10-20 with subsidize and mass volume production by that time.

The tablet PC Sakshat is suitable for Internet browsing, reading e-books and viewing Multimedia.

Rs 500 laptop display on Feb 3

NEW DELHI: A $10 laptop (Rs 500) prototype, with 2 GB RAM capacity, would be on display in Tirupati on February 3 when the National Mission on
Education through Information and Communication Techology is launched.

The $10 laptop project, first reported in TOI three years ago, has come as an answer to the $100 laptop of MIT's Nicholas Negroponte that he was trying to hardsell to India. The $10 laptop has come out of the drawing board stage due to work put in by students of Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT-Madras and involvement of PSUs like Semiconductor Complex. “At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down,” R P Agarwal, secretary, higher education said.

Apart from questioning the technology of $100 laptops, the main reason for HRD ministry's resistance to Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project was the high and the hidden cost that worked out to be $200.

The mission launch would also see demonstration of e-classroom, virtual laboratory and a better 'Sakshat' portal that was launched more than two years ago. Sources also said that the ministry has entered into an agreement with four publishers — Macmillan, Tata McGraw Hill, Prentice-Hall and Vikas Publishing — to upload their textbooks on 'Sakshat'. Five per cent of these books can be accessed free.

The mission, with an 11th plan outlay of Rs 4,612 crore, is aimed at making a serious intervention in enhancing the Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education. The mission has two major components. One, content generation through its portal 'Sakshat', and two, building connectivity along with providing access devices for institutions and learners.

In this context, government would give Rs 2.5 lakh per institution for 10 Kbps connection and subsidise 25% of costs for private and state government colleges.

The mission would seek to extend computer infrastructure and connectivity to over 18,000 colleges in the country, including each department of nearly 400 universities and institutions of national importance. The mission would focus on appropriate e-learning procedures, providing facility of performing experiments through virtual laboratories, online testing and certification, online availability of teachers to guide and mentor learners, and utilization of EduSat and DTH.

Did Microsoft Fake XP on XO Press Media?!

Do you remember all the hoopla around the XP on the XO announcement in May? Where Microsoft gave us a press release, blog post, and a video, all announcing Windows XP for the XO laptop. Well, thanks to the sleuths on OLPC News Forum it looks like Microsoft may have faked two of the three.

XP on XO Photoshopped?

First, let's look at the official press release photograph showing XP on the XO. Now, take a very, very close look. Do you see what teapot sees?

The image is definitely an overlay -- lower corners obscure the screen border, and black areas around the screen are nowhere to be found.

However diagonal graininess of the blue background seems to suggest that it may be taken on XO or XO emulator, and pasted to compensate for camera's contrast/dynamic range. Pretty strange considering that XO screen is not particularly bright or glossy.

If you look at the photo on James U's blog post, you can really tell the difference - his image has the XP screen looking way more natural. And if that were the only trespass, who really cares, eh? Everyone Photoshops.

Yet, its not. Just take a close look at the Microsoft XP on XO video:

Now re-watch that video, closely, and pay attention to the background and the details of Bohdan Raciborski's actions. Previously, we knew there was some time-shifting going on when Doug noticed subtle changes in previous comments:

The other observation is that this "video" is a very well done production and something done over a period of time and not likely a short period of time.

I say this because if you look at the section where he does the video capture, the recorded video of him waving does not have the poster on the wall behind him. The "live" shot where he waves his hand does have the poster behind him.

But recently, we've had a bit more analysis of the video, and the results may surprise you. After a close inspection, Anna has a startling opinion:

At the very least, the Windows Movie Maker thing was staged or faked. My BF has an XP machine, and being an A/V tech, was kinda curious. Recording video with Windows Movie Maker doesn't work like that. And it's out of order. Notice how the clip is at the bottom left of the screen the entire time and then disappears when it's time to "save" it.

In addition, the audio doesn't seem to match the wave patterns in the audio record. If it really played off the XO, I've never heard the XO speakers sound that good.

Now how could Microsoft faked such a video? Let's have Anna explain her hypothesis:

To spell it out, I'm bringing up the possibility that they captured the output from a regular XP machine to a video file and played it back on the XO to produce a carefully choreographed demonstration. Yeah, I know it sounds like a bizarre conspiracy theory.

Or does it? Its not like Microsoft hasn't faked video before. They were famously caught trying to use "massaged" videos in their anti-trust Netscape case with the Department of Justice. And in this case, a massaged video wouldn't be legally actionable, but did serve its PR purpose. That is until eagle-eye Anna spotted one last, tell-tale trace of XP on the XO fakery:

Notice how the HDD light (the one on the far left) only comes on during bootup and is off the entire time during the demonstration EXCEPT when he flips the screen around to show off Internet Explorer in book mode?

Huh. That's not how the XO hard disk light works.

source : http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/microsoft/microsoft_fake_press_media.html

How Laptops in Education Can Help Dictators, Hurt Learning

holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on worries that the OLPC's BitFrost security protocols could hand a ready-made surveillance system to controlling 3rd world governments. The laptops identify themselves regularly to a server that can disable individual machines reported stolen — a system that hands a government a kill switch for every unit. BitFrost also has the potential to have machines attach a unique ID to every internet transaction, helping out anyone wanting to track net internet use. A freely available paper from a recent USENIX conference spells out the concerns." Relatedly, an anonymous reader points out a story at Slate about a study which examined the impact that free PCs had on poor students in Romania, writing that "giving the kids machines without a corresponding level of parental supervision just resulted in distractions which ultimately damaged academic performance. By contrast, allowing children access to machines in a supervised setting, say an after school program via school labs, might mitigate some of the negative effects."