The India’s government has finally finished their rough development for their home ground slate pc, named the ‘Sakshat’. It means ‘In Reality’ in India. The Sakshat is actually a very amazing low-budget slate aimed for the students of India. It’s amazing because the Sakshat was initially planned for a $10 retail price, and went into many hurdles and challenges along the way, which made it rather not feasible to see the light of days. But now, it’s out in retail for India, though with a market price of $35, it’s still a good price despite not being able to meet its targeted price.
The irony of this press release by the Human Resources Minister of the Union of India, Mr. Kapil Sibal, is that the specs and manufacturers were still undisclosed. Most probably it’s manufactured by a government contracted electronics company in India. Some rough specs have been known though, like 2GB of storage, Wi-Fi capable, integrated Ethernet port, and 2 watts of power consumption. The Sakshat will be running on Linux operating system.
The minister claimed that the first motherboard fabricated for initial development and testing cost nearly $47 per piece. Through strict cost cutting procedures and extreme customization, they’ve managed to pull down the price to its current $30. The minister also openly invites private manufacturers to step into the project, which will ultimately pull down the price even further while improving the quality and specs. With the India’s government projected plan to provide subsidy to this slate device, they hope for the end result to have its initially planned retail price of $10, which is a very amazing price for such a device.
The Sakshat went through many beta testing from students and lecturers from public and private institutes across the whole country, and already has 500 web apps and video courses for students in its online portal. Currently there’s 8,500 colleges connected in the portal, and the government firm is still finalizing around 1,100 more engineering and science courses into the Sakshat. Future plans have already been dotted, like integration of the popular worldwide video portal, YouTube into the Sakshat’s interface. It looks like the India’s government has a great project in their hands, kudos!
More read http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=63417
More read http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=63417
