CPU/Mobo A computer made for 'poor' Indians which costs ₹17K

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avi

avi

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1381437927/endless-computers

And did I you tell you that it comes without Monitor, Keyboard or Mouse? How nice is it. It has no composite video out and only HDMI. So poor people must have Tv with HDMI.

Amazing config of this amazing low cost computer:

INTEL® CELERON® N2807
1.7 GHZ DUAL-CORE PROCESSOR
(BURST SPEED 2.1 GHZ)
2 GB OF RAM
32 GB EMMC AND SD STORAGE
RJ-45 GIGABIT ETHERNET PORT
(2) USB 2.0 PORTS (FRONT, LOWER REAR)
(1) USB 3.0 PORT (UPPER REAR)
STEREO LINE OUT
HDMI & VGA OUT
24W, 12V POWER INPUT (100-240V, 50/60HZ)

3 years ago, author was touring in India. He saw so many poor Indians without computers and but most of them had Tv. He had this groundbreaking revelation that he can connect his smartphone to Tv and make it to a computer! Wah! Now everyone can have a computer! What an idea sirjee.

How cost is calculated = ($169+$169*0.09+$60+$169*0.1685) USD into INR = ₹17019.50

$169 - cost of base unit with 32GB memory (no wifi)
9% of $169 - California sales tax
$60 - shipping
16.85% of $169 - Indian customs duty

The way crowd funding usually operates, these are 'early bird' costs and later usually it will be higher. So expect final price is to be ₹20K. Even if they reduce shipping costs to $20 somehow, it will still cost a lot.
 
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They are taking people for a ride. You can build a better PC in a India using different combinations. So, this definitely has no place in India.

Seems like this is the fate of all crowd-funding sites.
 
Sheesh. I just bought 2x assembled PCs - i3 4150 + Gigabyte H81 [no HDMI :(] + 4GB Kingston + WD 1TB + Circle mini cabinet with SMPS for 17.3K
 
Lord Nemesis said:
They are taking people for a ride. You can build a better PC in a India using different combinations. So, this definitely has no place in India.

Seems like this is the fate of all crowd-funding sites.
Click to expand...
Yup. This is a scam. Look at the config.

They are following simple textbook steps to make money off poor:
1. Visit India
2. Take pics of poor people
3. Show it everywhere
4. ???
5. Profit.
 
g3220/4gb ddr3 1600mhz kingston ram/ecs h81 board with hdmi/circle itx cabinet with 400w psu/logitech k400 wireless keyboard with touchpad/500gb seagate hdd = 14.5k (8th March 2015)
 
Hi everyone, I work at Endless. We appreciate the scrutiny and the questions here.

A key distinction is that our goal is not to make the cheapest computer, it is to make the *best* computer for emerging markets.

Our user is not someone who lives in extreme poverty. Our user has food on their table, a job, a TV in their home, a motorcycle and probably a cellphone. Perhaps this is someone who works as a cook or a driver - someone who has disposable income, but for whom computers are still out of reach. When we talk to this user, it's clear how aspirational they are. They don't want the cheapest computer. In fact, a woman I spoke to in Pune told me that if the price is too low, she sees the value also as being too low. Instead, she wants the best computer possible, at a price she can afford. That is the product that we are trying to build.

I would also like to draw your attention to our software, since that is where much of our innovation is. We have spent three years on the ground, talking to our users, and we have tailored the software to their needs. We learned that computers are often too difficult to use. For example, we asked users from our target market to play music off a typical computer and they'll often stare at the screen, unwilling to even touch the mouse to go through a complicated process (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Entertainment > Windows Media Player). Also, internet connectivity is limited, expensive, and spotty, which often makes the computer much less useful.

So, we simplified our interface to be app based. We built an app store for installation that is as simple as a single click. We made thousands of changes to make our OS intuitive and easy to use. We developed an ecosystem of applications that provide everything we would normally want on a computer (word processors, music player, games) to specific needs of this user, like education and health information. And these applications work without internet.

Again, we see the power of this in the experiences of our users. A 17-year-old boy in an industrial area outside Pune has a (donated) computer in his home and he still comes to a local community center to use Endless. Why? Neither computer has internet, but Endless has a full offline encyclopedia that he uses for his engineering college assignments.

We are still in early stages in India and aren't launching here yet. In part, because we understand that India needs a more affordable product. And still, we have built software through research in India and elsewhere that people here are extremely eager to use.
 
"If we ran a full desktop operating system on the inexpensive processors that power smartphones, and plugged them into the TVs people already own, we could make a computer that is affordable to more people"

Lovely thought, but you know that I had in mind some 5 years back? (Of course I failed in prediction)
Smartphones will beat "traditional PCs" in low end processing power and act like a processing hub.
Keyboard, mouse, external speakers, external HD/NAS, monitors would be attached to this "processing hub" and provide full blown solution.
I don't know if such a solution has come to see the light.
The hardware for such mobile computing smartphone would be generic just like we do for assembled PCs and the OS would be linux based.
 
Interesting that the Endless people have so much time on their hands that they can search out blogs/forum posts for negative comments and then give tldr propaganda about this stuff.
 
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Riah said:
A key distinction is that our goal is not to make the cheapest computer, it is to make the *best* computer for emerging markets.

Our user is not someone who lives in extreme poverty. Our user has food on their table, a job, a TV in their home, a motorcycle and probably a cellphone. Perhaps this is someone who works as a cook or a driver - someone who has disposable income, but for whom computers are still out of reach. When we talk to this user, it's clear how aspirational they are. They don't want the cheapest computer. In fact, a woman I spoke to in Pune told me that if the price is too low, she sees the value also as being too low. Instead, she wants the best computer possible, at a price she can afford. That is the product that we are trying to build.
Click to expand...

First of, what is your definition of 'best'? The way I see it, your fancy little box has a simple and smooth exterior and therefore will be easy to clean in dusty India, but I don't see the point of everything else. Its put together with slower hardware which an assembled system can easily beat. But wait, its not fair to compare the power of your system to an assembled system right? But your system does not seem to have the potential to be upgraded in the future either. Are you suggesting that the poor unfortunate people of India are to use a Celeron for the rest of their life? Never mind that, since when were computers out of reach to people in India? I'm yet to visit to find a single city in India where computers are difficult to order and have assembled. Infact the situation is so bad that I know IT engineers in Mumbai who want to get out of the computers field because of how diluted the market has become and due to competition from cheap android tablets and cheap laptops. You are NOT doing people like these a favour by giving them an inferior system in a fancy box when they can walk to a computer shop in India and order a more powerful, flexible and reliable i3 system or heck, even a portable laptop as suggested above.

Riah said:
I would also like to draw your attention to our software, since that is where much of our innovation is. We have spent three years on the ground, talking to our users, and we have tailored the software to their needs. We learned that computers are often too difficult to use. For example, we asked users from our target market to play music off a typical computer and they'll often stare at the screen, unwilling to even touch the mouse to go through a complicated process (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Entertainment > Windows Media Player). Also, internet connectivity is limited, expensive, and spotty, which often makes the computer much less useful.
Click to expand...

This is worst part of it all. Rather than teach Indians to use a computer and build up a knowledge in Windows/Linux from using this computer, you would rather they use an easy to use but closed-up Linux distro which they are never going to see anywhere else in life. Your innovation has good intentions, but you guys are dooming them to use a software they will never use or experience anywhere else. Even those who have learnt a little about computers will have to relearn everything from scratch just to be able to use your system. This is a terrible idea. A well setup Linux distro or even a special Windows version with word processors, games, offline encylopedias, etc would do more these people long term and is worth the price of being slightly more difficult to use.
 
Honestly, i dont think making the software easy-to-use should be a priority because;
a) think about how we all came to learn about computers - trial and error right? we all followed a 'oooooh-what-does-this-button-do' attitude with the first computer we got our hands on
b) an experiment was conducted by a man whose house wall bordered a slum and he made a hole in the wall that had just enough space to push through a monitor, keyboard and mouse with the rest of the cpu on his side of the wall. he came home from work in the evening half-expecting the system to be vandalised but instead found a dozen or so kids huddled around it trying to figure out minesweeper. Their curiosity was just as strong as ours when we first saw a computer.
c) a better move would be to provide cheap systems to schools in rural areas as this also provides an incentive for kids to attend. I hated maths/physics/chem but loved computer class (we got to tinker around with macromedia flash on our first day)
d) compare the number of times you've seen a grown-up struggling with a tablet vs. a child as young as 4-5 yrs happily zipping through apps, sites and what-not.
 
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