I lack the community interaction right now which is my motivation so that has caused me to focus more on researching different stuff at night and helping local ngo learn how to operate their cpu, install printers, and useful software.
The "office boy" as he is called is a freshman in college who has been studying for a couple tests in math and compsci so i've been helping him with that in exchange for an english hindi exchange. People are very computer illiterate around here because electronics are so expensive. This is something i noticed in peru too. The US really sets it up so that they have cheap cpus (and europe maybe i dunno) but big developing countries's populations are really restricted from access very effectively and quietly. I havent researched it much but maybe it has something to do with: immediate buyout by large developed companies of growing tech hardware firms in developing world, high export of electronics and low import of raw materials into us and in turn the other countries face such stiff competition from other developing countries for cheap labor they sign of since they at least get some jobs so they sign off on the deal.
Apparently a decent desktop around here is $1000 and big issue is that noone can fix their own machine so they depend on paying companies to fix any small issues related to their equipment. Printer not working, ok ask the manufacturer what is wrong, they say you should just buy a new one, ok we'll buy a new one. Mansingh (my college friend) is amazed that you can just enter something into google translator and it pops out hindi. Mostly he is mesmerized by the keyboard though, and won't touch it. He says he has no idea how to use it and doesn't want to break it. He said his college (agra university) has no cpus available for use, and if i understood correctly, that most profesors don't have cpus and only a handful of students.) I assume this is not entirely true, but I'm sure its not like the US where a laptop is essentially included in the cost of a freshmen's college education.
So I started some research and found some other options, many of the links from here would not open and it seems many are either not available or only in concept stages. This makes sense as they have not very effectively penetrated world markets - which is no easy task to set up that kind of supply chain. I just started, my search so i am looking for more information on this topic if anyone has any thoughts.
Low-cost computing & Low-cost laptops(2008)
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