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Comment by msinghai | Hacker News Reader

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 Keyboard nor my external Hard disk was compatible. I'll give it a rating of 3 out of 6.

It's basically slow with its 300mhz processor. You can easily get 600mhz tabs at 38$ directly from the Chinese factories.

But, there is one good thing about this, which is the GPRS capability. It also comes with 100 mb free data per month plan.

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This device is not meant for someone like you to even evaluate. It is not meant to be used by people who hang out on hacker news or for people who grew up in Delhi and who travel in a/c Delhi metro. It is for poor kids in UP/Bihar who will never have any access to such technology otherwise. You have to see the bigger picture here.

I agree with kloc - you are not the target audience for this market. The reality is that the digital divide is still so real in India. The idea is to not give [underprivileged] children a toy product for watching YouTube videos, but to give them access to a device, a technology and a revolution that they otherwise would never even have dreamed to have access to. I for one applaud the Indian Govt's efforts to "democratize" access to technology. Also remember this is just a v1 - I'm sure as things get cheaper, better, faster etc. so will this device.

> 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, always available internet access is a huge disruption.

That's true. I mean imagine for rural farmers how revolutionary it would be just to go on a weather website and be able to see that it's not supposed to frost within a couple days after they plant.

So, 3 years ago you'd have called it revolutionary.

Technology moves so fast these days that if you don't place the bar for your product sufficiently high you won't be able to get happy customers even if you give it away.

But it won't be $35 3 years ago.

let those little ones play with the system, some of them will soon realize how much there is in the world outside and some of them will attempt to change the world!

its not about how fast it is or what all things are wrong in that. its about whatever is right in that - which indeed will be amazing for them.

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