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Monday, 20 June 2011

Oh $35 Tablet, Where Art Thou?

Ever since Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal unveiled a prototype of Sakshat, the “$35-dollar Tablet,” in July last year, techies everywhere have been longing for it to be ready—and to see how it holds up against rivals at the far end of the price spectrum. But sadly, the tablet has kept a very low profile ever since.

True, there are periodic sightings of the device. In August, NDTV's "Gadget Guru" program got a good look at the prototype (Watch the video; if you're short on time, start watching nine minutes in). At the time, the device had a touchscreen (apparently a slightly sluggish one), a camera, a stylus, Wi-fi capability, and an Android operating system. It also had two USB ports, and slots for a SIM card and flash memory card.

People were so skeptical about the device that when asked to name one of the plus points of the gadget, NDTV tech reviewer Rajiv Makhni responded, first, “That it exists.”

And then there are the rumors of its sighting.

An Indian news wire report last month suggested that the device was already being used in an ongoing poverty census across the country.

And last week, a series of tech blogs, many of them citing a June 16 Times of India report, said that the tablet was finally beginning to ship on a mass scale this month, with 10,000 units set to go to the Indian Institute of Technology, Rajasthan.

Indranil Mukherjee/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
How will the elusive Sakshat compare to the iPad, above?< [...]



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