I was quoted in a story in The Economic Times on low-cost computing by Prabhakar Deshpande:
Rajesh Jain, managing director, Netcore Solutions, believes that there can be delightfully simple yet effective solution. Jain suggests that a thin client-thick server solution with all required software being run and installed only on a server can bring computing costs down by almost 70%. The thin client could be an old abandoned PC, or a specially configured PC from Via technologies. Thus the thin client would cost between Rs 7000 to Rs 10,000. A thick server hosting Linux OS and costing Rs 30,000 could be shared between 10 users thus amounting to an apportioned cost of Rs 3000 per person. Open source software freely available on the net could be configured on server for offering word processing, spreadsheet, browser, email and other facilities with a cost to each user of Rs 1000 – 2000. Thus every person in an enterprise could be offered a desktop for between Rs 11,000 to Rs 15,000.
