Simple computing

India is often seen a place were great computer engineers come from, so it's not that surprising to hear that there's some great tech coming out of the country as well. The latest toy is a funky little box called the Simputer - yes, it stands for

India is often seen a place were great computer engineers come from, so it's not that surprising to hear that there's some great tech coming out of the country as well. The latest toy is a funky little box called the Simputer - yes, it stands for simple computing, and it seems that the box's developers may have just gotten it right.

Three professors from the Indian Institute of Science and four engineers from Indian software company Encore are the fathers of this little brainchild, and they developed it as a simple way to get computing to the masses. The Simputer is the size of a hardcover novel, and is powered by an Intel processor and 32MB of RAM and 16MB of Flash memory. It runs Linux, has a touch sensitive screen, is capable of speech recognition, and can connect to any old phone line to let you surf or check email. And it runs on commercial AAA batteries.

Of course, now they've got to find someone to develop the thing into a commercial product. As the Simputer is aimed at the education and mass market sectors, I hope they pull it off.