The Simputer was and is a brilliant concept being thought about in India (which is very poorly Technology oriented country vis-a-vis new technology ideas). Particularly the Social implications and impact of the Simputer was initially a very lofty but doable goal.
But like all things Indian - the goal petered out due to lack of proper funding. Ultimately some private companies and entrepreneurs took it upon themselves to launch the Simputer but with totally different goals - more profit driven and more of a corporate slant to the whole thing - which in itself is not bad.
But the social implications - every farmer and village cooperative havng a simputer and exchanging data via Smart cards and using local language enhancements and instant data (like farm data, pricing weather etc) to bring information to the common denominator of the indian masses (and not just the tech savvy IT industry) - that has been lost in the process.
Neverthless a very good device. Sadly one of the companies selling the simputer is a Singapore based company. Hence when I was in India, I tried enquiring about the Simputer - not many people even knew of its existance.
But seeing this developer initiative behind the simputer is heartening at least.
