Scientific American reviews the Simputer, a handheld that is aimed at the world’s poor rather than at corporate executives:
“We envisage that a village might club together to buy one,” notes Shashank Garg, vice president for product development at Encore. A farmer in India, for example, could use the Simputer to find out the latest prices for cotton, allowing him to strike a better deal when selling his crop. The next day one of his neighbors could use the same device to examine government property records, eliminating the need to make a difficult journey to the city.