Design and Hardware
The device was designed by the Simputer Trust, a non-profit organization formed in November 1999 by seven Indian scientists and engineers led by Dr. Swami Manohar. The word "Simputer" is an acronym for "simple, inexpensive and multilingual people's computer", and is a trademark of the Simputer Trust. The device includes text-to-speech software and runs the GNU/Linux operating system. Similar in appearance to the Palm Pilot class of handheld computers, the touch sensitive screen is operated on with a stylus; simple handwriting recognition software is provided by the program Tapatap.
The Simputer Trust licensed two manufacturers to build the devices, Encore Software, which has also built the Mobilis for Corporate/Educational purposes and the SATHI for Defence purposes, and PicoPeta Simputers, which released a consumer product named the Amida Simputer.
The device features include touchscreen, Smart-card, Serial port, and USB connections, and an Infrared Data Association (IrDA) port. It was released in both greyscale and color versions.
Read more about this topic: Simputer
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