Dear FOSS Nepal Community Members, I have been researching into various Alternative Hardware Access Solutions and came upon the Canadian Project - INK Mobile PCs as an affordable alternative to expensive hardware carrying pirated or closed source/proprietary software. The INK (http://www.ink-media.com) is targetted to sell between $210 to $250 and is already booked to be used in a EU funded Telehealth project.
The laptop will be available in either 8.6" or with 15" inch screen, running a Freescale 1.3 GHz Processor, 256 MB Ram, INK OS (Open Source) embedded 1.4GB compressed on to a Flashrom and will carry no harddisk but will have a USB drive with it. Touchscreen options and a possible $160 desktop are also available. Kindly go through their website at http://www.ink-media.com and explore whether the specs are adequate for African Mass Market penetration, this would actually mean slashing 1/4th of all hardware prices for new equipment for use by Homes, Children/Schools, Colleges, Small and Medium Enterprise Businesses. Their way of providing laptops is for everyone instead of the OLPC strategy, say a million pcs to a Govt. I would see this as a very affordable and feasible alternative for the Nepali FOSS Community as well as other regions but again, your comments on the same will help me identify the key issues pertaining to the use of Alternative Hardware running FOSS for your people's use. Other alternatives are the One Laptop Per Child to be sold at $175 and the Intel Classmate PC expected to be sold at $250-300. I am looking forward to the comments of the members on this list. Best Regards Fouad Riaz Bajwa --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ FOSS Nepal mailing list foss-nepal@googlegroups.com http://groups.google.com/group/foss-nepal Community website: http://www.fossnepal.org/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
