BANGALORE: The techno-social evolution of the Simple Computer (Simputer) from the IISc-BEL drawing board to the brand moniker "Amida" (derived from the Sanskrit root ‘amita’ meaning unbounded), seemed to have started well before its March 26 launch. From its initial billing as a low-cost portable alternative to desktops, and technology percolator to the common man, the Amida Simputer has hit the ground running. The newest debutant on the Indian hardware scene rode in on some aggressive price points, to take on the gloomy handheld PC market. With the cool reception the Encore Software’s Simputer received three years ago still fresh in everybody’s memory, the Amida Simputer is clearly targeted at the urban technophile.

When the volumes game entered the picture in the shape of PicoPeta Simputers, the technology and software solutions provider for the Amida Simputer, "aspirational value" was bound to board the sales pitch bandwagon; along with the simplicity, affordability, accessibility and ease of use which the product promised.

Besides the almost 100 per cent Indian colours, and the resultant branding appeal that the Amida Simputer holds, PicoPeta was looking at pure accessibility through three price points, two of them well above the Rs 6,000 per unit promised down the years since 1998, when the Simputer was first conceived by a joint team from Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Encore Software.

"The Amida Simputer was worth the wait," exults Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) Chairman and Managing Directo, Y. Gopal Rao, with the finality of a man on the first lap of his technology roadshow. "With Amida, BEL has moved from its traditional defence electronics IPs into the civilian market space." Rao’s predecessor at BEL, V.K. Koshy, had four years ago, taken the initiative to spearhead the Simputer’s leap from concept to product by entering into a production tie-up with IISc startup PicoPeta. BEL now manages Amida’s assembly line.

Ahead of its appearance in Bangalore showrooms in April this year, the initial sales of the Amida Simputer following the product’s launch, seemed to validate Rao’s optimism. First-time buyers clogged PicoPeta’s stalls as company salesmen scurried to stuff the handhelds into dozens of paper bags and dole out on-the-spot demonstrations to milling crowds of "aspirants".

The most persistent interlocutors were aspiring laptop buyers who seemed pleased by the results of their test-runs on the Amida. They were surfing merrily from one website to the other, scribbling and zapping off emails, and downloading MPEG files on the Amida’s MP3 player. Providing an almost unlimited set of Internet browsing features, including the ability to doodle and mail webpages, send voice-mail, and tab pages in a single window (a neat take on Mozilla’s Firefox), the Amida’s features seemed compelling enough for dozens of buyers to plonk their money down at the sales counters.

Now, for some pettifogging. The Amida Simputer can send across email in longhand as a viewable vector, but you can’t convert it into text yet once you receive it on your desktop PC or Mac, until a suitable compiler is available for download on Amida’s product website. No handwriting or speech recognition yet for Amida users. Extensions are something the Amida Simputer is not strong on, but upcoming variants could remedy that more than fairly, first-time buyer Arun Ghosh hoped, as he sauntered off with three Simputers tucked away under his arm. And, to exercise your Wi-Fi/Bluetooth rights on the Amida, out come the adapters, besides some money to be shelled out on the external modems.

An excited President Abdul Kalam dialled from Rashtrapati Bhavan wanting to know if the Amida was GPS-enabled. "Yes Mr President, it can be customized for the specialist buyer," replied Gopala Rao. And Linux? But of course, it’s all open and modular.

As for the speed of the USB connection and the intricacies of the Simputer’s much-touted Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities, let’s leave that to the experts. "But who needs a mobile phone cum handheld when most urban buyers will use cellphones anyway?" asks Ghosh. Granted, but when the Simputer emerged as the dominant rural communication idea during its nascence in the late ’90s, its pioneers envisioned the invention to remove illiteracy as a barrier to handling a computer. Looking ahead, further integration of telecom, hard disk and browser functionality to take advantage of the increasing IP convergence, would serve the rural end user better someday.

"This is just the beginning," predicts PicoPeta CEO, Swami Manohar of the company’s first product. "Amida users are going to find the end-to-end functionality of the Simputer getting better with faster access and more memory in store in future versions," adds Manohar, a former associate professor with the Department of Computer Science and Automation of IISc, and one of the first seven trustees of the Simputer Trust.

With the look and feel of Palm’s topselling Tungsten, Amida could help bridge the urban digital divide with its shared devices that permit truly simple and natural user interfaces based on sight, touch and audio. Research volumes in the shape of compression algorithms pumped into the product were aimed at increasing comfort levels of the end user across media. The manufacturer has even squeezed in a voice recorder and voice mail and land registration capabilities, besides making the device intimate with WiFi/Bluetooth adapters, portable printers, scanners, Ethernet adapters, keyboards, flash memory sticks, PDAs. Anything left out?

Striking with pricepoints

PicoPeta is keeping its first Simputer pricepoints lean, mean and competitive at Rs 9,950 for the base model and Rs 12,450 and Rs 19,950 at the higher ends. With a production target of over 10,000 units every month, the hopes of the company seem to be riding high on the aspiring laptop buyer and the first-time PC buyer. Why not? The Amida’s configurations and 32 MB permanent storage with 64 MB RAM combined with 206 Mhz processor speed delivers on what a branded PC could do six years ago. With more fins and greater knots added while sailing on a stream of user-friendly features.

Industry watchers expect prices to dip further when the production volume touches 100,000 pieces.

PicoPeta (Pico for "small" and Peta for "large) was among the first startups to come out of IISc, believing that the smallest of changes can make a very large difference. Notching up its first product, and billed by MIT as one of the seven hottest academic startups in the world, Prof Vinay, chairman and chief technologist of the company is bullish about Amida’s road ahead in India’s minuscule handheld market.

The Reliance connection in the Amida Simputer project is emphasized in its interest in the end product. The company has placed orders for hundreds of Amida units for its widespread enterprise sales force. Besides the obligatory landline connection, you could try a Reliance CDMA phone to get mobile on the Net. And Wi-Fi too, with an external modem tagged on if you please. Amida’s strongest USP lies in its untangling the handheld from of its restrictive WAP cocoon — a challenge over the years. You can with the Internet browser see all text and images on any website in the world — unlike WAP — mobile phones, Amida does not restrict you to a limited set of features or websites.

And, it is totally Indian. Well, not totally, the LCD work has been outsourced from the capable hands of Sharp Electronics, Japan. A bang for the buck? Too early to say. The Amida Simputer looks and feels like the Palm Tungsten, but again the saturation point for handhelds remains in lesser RAM and internal memory space. It’s not the total answer to your laptop or the home PC, but the Amida is unimaginably feature-rich and primed for the always-on digi-wanderer. As for trying out your Turbine Steam-Consumption Calculator on the Amida, that will have to wait.

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