$20 Tablet from India

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

I have always looked to the Chinese to offer low cost knock offs of american electronics at a fraction of the cost. I have not found Indian companies as good at the process of reverse engineering any product, copying it then selling the knock off at a fraction of the original's price. The Chinese are masters at this process however the Indians have bit had as much success. Guess I will go look for a Chinese knock off of the major ebook readers.

The problem is that most Chinese workers now make upwards of US$500 per month, so the days of producing ultra-cheap knock-offs are numbered. Some of these were produced during periods when the factories had little or no orders and they just wanted to keep their workers doing something. Now that the situation has become permanent such factories are closing down in droves, nobody can sustain a money losing business indefinitely.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by kevinp

Sure, I remember everybody getting headaches from looking at the screen all day at work. Hardware companies coming up with all kinds of "glare filters" to make it more tolerable.

That was more a issue with CRT monitors refresh rate flicker rather than resolution size. You needed to adjust a CRT monitor's refresh rate as resolution increased. This did reduce flicker but did not eliminate it.

I remember the glare filters on CRT's. Used them for many years before changeover to LCD.

[shenye]

Originally Posted by kevinp

I miss my Atari 800XL.

And it sure was worth more than $20 back in the days.

[kevinp]

Originally Posted by shenye

And it sure was worth more than $20 back in the days.

Actually, I got lucky. I guy in my barracks was getting transferred and he wanted to get rid of it. I took it off his hands along with an external 5 1/4 floppy drive for $50.

Anyway, enough about that. I don't want to get accused of getting too far off topic.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Just remember that most of the Indian population earn a fraction of what we earn. So $25 USD is going to be about as much as an iPad to us in comparison.

If this tablet, knock-off or not, allows wider tablet ownership in India to become an actuality, then more power to it.

True things like income are relative. I remember seeing a documentary about the early movies where people were in an uproar because the cost of admission had risen from a nickle to a dime. Of course the average income was smaller for the common man on the street back then too. And old catalog reprints list the cost of a book (Sears and Robuck) at around $1.00 for them, not to mention other things. And I imagine some people found those prices a bit steep to afford back in the day too. So I can see a $25.00 ereader as being an expensive item in some parts of the world. I paid $139.00 for my first Kindle Keyboard and I wager people in other parts of the world would think of that as being equivalent to spending several $1000.00 bucks.

[frahse]

More power to them.