Very inexpensive computers and how they can improve life in Pakistan

We’re starting to see some really cheap computers make their way on to the commercial landscape. Based on the trends we’re seeing, one can only imagine what the price of an Eee PC or Cloudbook like device would be at the end of the year. Probably $199! So now that we’re finally at a point where the Classmate PC is being adopted in Pakistan and roughly 2 million PCs are being sold in the country annually, some serious attention should be given to what cheap PCs and embedded computers can do to improve people’s lives in Pakistan.
Here are some projects that are being worked on, followed by some of our ideas… feel free to share yours too!

1. NUST’s AgriKiosk
2. LUMS’ phone based agricultural instrumentation device
3. FiveRivers’ Sirius handheld for general purpose educational applications

Some really cool stuff that can be done with cheap computers:

1. CNC control for small lathe and machine shops; with simple software and some CNC extensions to locally produced machine tools, mom and pop machine shops can drastically enhance their productivity while enlarging the scope of things they can build.
2. Traffic management; think GPS + prepaid cell + low cost computer = an anonymous location beacon. If a sufficient number of cars had such a device, not only could it be used to provide the driver with in-car entertainment and information services, it could also notify a central server as to its current location in an anonymous fashion. The central server would look at data from thousands of such beacons to provide a traffic map of our cities. The same server could also provide alternate route information based on real time traffic patterns and actually ease the flow of traffic by diverting people to alternate routes.
3. Telemedicine at a large scale

Have your say!