The Simputer (Simple Computer) is a sub-$200 internet device designed to help non-literate users get online in developing countries. The device, which has been designed by professors and  students at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) at Bangalore and engineers from Bangalore-based design company Encore Software, is built around Intel’s StrongARM CPU, with Linux as the operating system. It will have 16 MB of flash memory, a monochrome liquid crystal display (LCD) with a touch panel overlay for pen-based computing, and a local-language interface.Its designers expect the Simputer to be used as both a personal Internet access device, and by communities of users at kiosks. ‘We expect to change the model for the proliferation of information technology in India,’ says Professor Swami Manohar, professor in the computer science and automation department of the IISc. ‘The current PC-centric model is not sustainable because of the high cost of the PC, and also because we expect that most of the users will not be literate.‘To counter the literacy problem, forthcoming versions of the Simputer are to offer speech recognition for navigation through menus. The speech dictionary will be customizable to support different languages, and a text-to-speech system is also in the pipeline to take the technology to India’s illiterate population. Later versions will also offer wireless capabilities.The intellectual property for the device has been transferred free to the non-profit Simputer Trust, and both the software and the hardware for the appliance are being developed under the Open Source license. Manohar says that the trust decided to make the technology Open Source to enable third party software developers and designers to add value to the platform.Vinay Deshpande, chairman of Encore and a member of the Simputer Trust, says that the designers have been able to achieve the sub-$200 price point by using off the shelf electronic components in the device and the open source OS Linux. He hopes a working prototype of the Simputer will be available in August.