News did the rounds earlier in the week about India’s supposed $10 dollar laptop. The laptop reportedly costs $20 to manufacture, but according to India’s Secretary for Higher Education, large-scale production runs would see the price in half by the time it hits consumers.

Unfortunately for everyone who got excited about the big unveiling, it seems like there’s less to the $10/$20 laptop than we originally thought--considerably less. With "megabytes" of onboard memory and wi-fi capabilities we (rather optimistically, we’ll admit) pictured something that resembled the netbooks we’re seeing now but a little more primitive. What we saw was not a laptop, nor was it $10, or even $20. And why it was being touted as a laptop still remains a mystery. The Sakshat is a 10-inch by 5-inch plastic box which, despite a big fancy unveiling at India's Sri Venkateswara University  looked more like a storage device than anything else. As for the $10 price, the expected price is closer to thirty bucks. Bummer. Feels like being promised an iPhone and getting two cans on a string. Probably has more reliable 3G, though.