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January 10th, 2012 
Kiran
The world’s cheapest tablet Aakash may soon be available on rent in college libraries with subject-wise video lectures in fields such as engineering, science and humanities pre-loaded on the low-cost tablet.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development, which is piloting the 4,600-crore National Mission for Education, has offered the low-cost tablet to state governments at half the price. The move aims at encouraging the states to distribute Aakash free to college libraries, which can then give them out on rent to desiring students.
“The duration of rental can be decided by the college,” a government official said on condition of anonymity. “Ultimately, we want Aakash to reach all 220 million school and college students. But until then, we would have to find ways for its optimum utilisation.”
The government has distributed about 10,000 units of Aakash since its launch in 2010. The units, which are in the test phase, have been given to the students on an undertaking that they will return the units after using them for some months.
The Centre is now working on specifications of version 2.0 of the tablet that will have a capacitive touchscreen, such as the one in Apple’s iPad, and a processor with speed ranging from 800 MHz to 1 GHz.
A prototype of Aakash 2.0 has already been designed. A tender inviting tablet vendors for the next version is likely to be floated soon.
Students had complained of difficulties in running heavy applications on Aakash, which has a 366 MHz processor.
via