HRD hopes to make $10 laptops a reality already at 47$.

Having rejected Nicholas Negroponte’s offer of $100 laptops for schoolchildren, HRD ministry’s idea to make laptops at $10 is firmly taking shape with two designs already in and public sector undertaking Semiconductor Complex evincing interest to be a part of the project.

So far, the cost of one laptop, after factoring in labour charges, is coming to $47 but the ministry feels the price will come down dramatically considering the fact that the demand would be for one million laptops. “The cost is encouraging and we are hopeful it would come down to $10. We would also look into the possibility of some Indian company manufacturing the parts,” an official said. The two designs with the ministry are from a final year engineering student of Vellore Institute of Technology and a researcher from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Due to reasons of Intellectual Property Rights being insisted by the two designers, the ministry is not parting with the design except giving out some of the major details. The laptop would be made on a single board which would make it easy to find faults and rectify it, say sources. A meeting of industry and academia is to take place in IISc, Bangalore, later this month to go through the two designs and invite more suggestions. Simultaneously, HRD ministry has been told by Semiconductor Complex, a Chandigarh-based PSU, that it would like to be part of the project. HRD ministry wants the company to get involved in the fabrication of laptops.

Six anchor groups set up by the ministry to be in touch with experts in critical areas and remove bottlenecks have been meeting regularly. Institutions like IITs and IISc have been identified as anchor institutions for the project and have been entrusted with the task of research and development of cheap laptops. Sources say it would be another two years before the laptops become a reality. “We do not want to rush into it. Many issues remain to be resolved like royalty to the designer after the design is patented. Prototyping would also take time. We would even conduct destructive testing and create a proper maintenance network,” said one official. Ministry sources also say that it has received offers from MNCs, but none of them was adhering to the $10 cost tag.

The below was an offer that HRD got but rejected

XO-1 (laptop)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Manufacturer
Quanta Computers
Type
Subnotebook
Connectivity
802.11b/g /s wireless LAN3 USB 2.0 portsMMC/SD card slot
Operating System
Fedora Core-based (Linux)
Camera
built-in video camera (640×480; 30 FPS)
Media
1 GB flash memory
Input
KeyboardTouchpadMicrophoneCamera
Power
NiMH battery pack
CPU
AMD Geode LX700@0.8W + 5536
Memory
256 MB DRAM
Display
dual-mode 19.1 cm/7.5" diagonal TFT LCD 1200×900

The XO-1, previously known as the $100 Laptop or Children's Machine, is a proposed inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children around the world, especially to those in developing countries, to provide them with access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The laptop is being developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) trade association. OLPC is a U.S. based, non-profit organization created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture, and distribute the laptops.
The rugged and low-power computers will contain flash memory instead of a hard drive and will use Linux as their operating system.Mobile ad-hoc networking will be used to allow many machines Internet access from one connection.
The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of one laptop per child. Pricing is currently expected to start at around US$135–175 and the goal is to reach the US$100 mark in 2008. Approximately 500 developer boards (Alpha-1) were distributed in summer 2006; 875 working prototypes (Beta 1) were delivered in late 2006; 2400 Beta-2 machines were distributed at the end of February 2007; full-scale production is expected to start in mid-2007. Quanta Computer, the project's contract manufacturer, said in February, 2007 that it had confirmed orders for one million units. They indicated they could ship 5 million to 10 million units this year because seven nations have committed to buy the XO-1 for their schoolchildren, including Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Thailand and Uruguay.
The OLPC project has stated that a consumer version of the XO laptop is not planned.[4] However, Quanta will be offering machines very similar to the XO machine on the open market.