Hands On: India’s $35 Aakash Android tablet lands in America

Post by megablast » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 10:13 PM UTC

solutionyogi wrote: post #11

microarchitect wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nitpicking, but no middle-class family can afford to spend 2k on a night out in India. Hell, I was earning a boatload (relatively of course) of money, and I wasn't comfortable spending more than 1k or so on a night out.

Completely agree. Right now I am in US and earn in dollars and support my family back home, even then my dad would never spend 1700 rupees on a night out. Also, if someone can afford to spend that kind of money for a night out, I am very sure they can afford a higher quality tablet. I think this is for someone like the maid who works at our home and makes around 3000 rupees a month. She can save money and buy this fo…

Post by microarchitect » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 10:37 PM UTC

megablast wrote: post #41

solutionyogi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. Right now I am in US and earn in dollars and support my family back home, even then my dad would never spend 1700 rupees on a night out. Also, if someone can afford to spend that kind of money for a night out, I am very sure they can afford a higher quality tablet. I think this is for someone like the maid who works at our home and makes around 3000 rupees a month. She can save money and buy this fo…

Ok, so how much would he spend on a night out, that would be useful onfo. 100 rupees? 500 rupees? Give us some context here.

Post by electromagnetic » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 10:54 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #44

msinghai wrote: post #21

Not to discourage you guys, but, this tablet is horrible. I am a class X Indian student, just got this for 2300 from the government outlet at Delhi. Its too slow. The battery only lasts an hour or so even if it's plugged in for 5 hours. YouTube, is also way too bad. Wifi connectivity is messed up. To switch to a new network, you have to restart the device. It feels a bit cheap on the outside too and neither my USB Ke…

> It also comes with 100 mb free data per month plan. If that's true then it is actually the real revolution here in my mind. For non-entertainment purposes a tablet is just a window onto the internet. It doesn't really matter how you get to the internet, but the minute you can your world expands a thousand fold. Suddenly giving millions (or tens or even hundreds of millions) of underprivileged people constant, alway…

Post by politician » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 4:50 AM UTC

irahul wrote: post #36

ctdonath wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the benefits of not making low-pay jobs illegal: the maid _has_ a job, and a middle-class family can afford to hire her for what the work is worth to them. This in contrast to the USA, where it is illegal to pay her what the work is worth (thanks to "minimum wage" laws), so she doesn't have a job and must be given some form of welfare, which the middle-class family which wants to hire her ends up paying without t…

My maid does the job because the job is pretty light weight and takes about half an hour on an average day. This setup enables her to work at other places. Maids aren't paid highly here because there is no welfare, the general income is quite low, and my maid can either make those 800 bucks working for me, or has to find another job. Depending on the situation, it might or might not be working well for her.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 5:21 AM UTC

nobody3141 wrote: post #23

mortenjorck wrote: post #19

"Many of those likely to use or own the the Aakash Tablet will never have used a desktop computer, and it’s possible they never will." Not sure why, but I love concepts like this.

The largest percentage of cell phone users in the world will never have used a landline and never will. It's a big mistake thinking that every new emerging economy has to go through the same industrialization steps in the same way as the last one.