"Built by the non-profit Simputer Trust, the device is
slightly larger than a regular handheld PC, and uses the
free-to-use Linux operating system.
Its software is expected to aid farmers seeking to know
commodity prices and beat middlemen and also provide speech
recognition in regional languages to help illiterate rural
folk.
At $250, the Simputer will be three times cheaper than a PC, and
cost about the same as a color TV set, a price level which is
expected to help spread computers to the corners of India,
two-thirds of whose one billion people live in rural areas."
