PCs that can bridge the electrical divide

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: If electricity is playing havoc, some of the answers could come from the computer on your desk. First came PCs that can run on car batteries without electricity for hours. Now, some enterprising vendors are offering back-up power for your fans and lights too. Next on cards is a PC that can be charged by pedaling and won't need a battery either. Unreliable power supply is not keeping the online stock traders away from markets either. Many of them are turning to their smartphones whenever they are faced with a long power-cut.

While these might not exactly sound like big technology break-throughs, simple solutions like these could take computing closer to bridging the digital divide. And India is not alone in helping bridge the digital divide by providing computing powers to the electricity-starved areas. A similar solution came form Nicholas Negroponte of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States who assembled a team of researchers and hardware vendors to produce a laptop that can run on commonly available batteries or conventional electrical power. It also has a hand crank that can power the computer for a few minutes at a time in emergencies. Massachusetts-based FirstMileSolutions.com has developed a wireless package that can be installed in villages and draws electrical power from a grid or a generator or solar panels. Few like US-based Advanced Micro Devices' personal Internet communicator are commercially available. It can run on nearly any kind of electric power like batteries, low-quality power sources and is engineered to withstand sudden electric disruptions.

Closer home, the booming retail segment seems to be driving the need for innovation. As value-added tax is pushing even small retailers to keep records of their transactions, many of them are looking at PCs seriously. "

As VAT catches on, even relatively smaller retailers need to keep records of inventories and bills and we see increased interest in computer-based point of sale terminals and retail solutions,'' confirms HCL Infosystems chairman and CEO, Ajai Chowdhry.