After a long wait, the much talked about tablet Aakash 2 has been launched by Indian President Pranab Mukherjee on November 11, 2012. The tablet has been designed, developed and manufactured by DataWind Ltd for supply to IIT Bombay.
In the first phase of the tablet’s roll-out, the company will be supplying 100,000 units of Aakash 2 to IIT Bombay, which will be distributed to engineering and college students. NK Sinha, the NME ICT director said, “We envision all 220 million students across India to be enabled by low cost Aakash devices in the coming years.”
The launch of the tablet was a part of a two day workshop which was conducted by IIT Bombay, for teaching faculties using remote training applications, developed at Open Source Development Lab at IIT Bombay. In recent months, IIT Bombay has developed several unique and compelling applications on the Aakash 2 platform for engineering students.
The applications include C++ programming, 3D modelling, robotic control, live assessment tools and remote and collaborative training applications. For hardware testing and logistics, IIT Bombay has joined hands with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. The commercial version of the tablet is known as the Ubislate 7Ci and is available for purchase on DataWind’s website.
The reviews on the unit have been impressive so far.
