The much-touted cheap computing device named “Sakshat” turned out to be a fancy “pen-drive” as The Times of India put it, with some bells and whistles. The details of the product, which are still not available, were unveiled by the Ministry of Human Resource Development at Tirupati recently. 

As for the product, what you get for Rs.500 are the following: 2GB of storage memory, WiFi connectivity, Ethernet port(s) and USB connectivity. This is a far cry from the laptop it was touted to be. For starters, there is no screen on this one — so there goes the computing device mumbo-jumbo. What this means is that for it to display data stored on it, it will need a compatible output device (which could be a laptop!).

The “Sakshat” measures 10″x5″ and will be priced at $10 even though the manufacturing costs had reached almost $30. But then, thanks to a considerable cost cutting endeavor, the cost was finally bought down to $10.

So, will this be a threat to those other wannabe low cost computers some publications in the US had thought of? No way! However, it is important to understand the purpose of the device, which seems to have been nagged by an identity crisis ever since its initial announcement. While the Sakshat does a bad job of being a laptop, it does make sense if you consider the intentions behind the device. The Sakshat has been designed as a pure educational gadget to offer downloadable lessons and make online textbooks easily accessible. The aim was to set up electronic classrooms and make online textbooks freely available for download across 18000 colleges and 4 000 universities across India. That sounds good doesn’t it? However, it was projected as a computing device, which we now know, it hardly is!

The Sakshat will be made available to the student community soon with the first lot reaching the colleges affiliated to The University of Andhra Pradesh soon.

What you get for Rs.500 are the following:

2GB of storage memory, WiFi connectivity, Ethernet port(s) and USB connectivity