I made reference to an article called Reliance Digital to Open 60 iStores Across India yesterday in a Gadget Links post. One thing I noticed, but didn’t have time to mention was the cost of a MacBook Air in India:
Among the products offered at iStore is MacBook Air, the world’s thinnest notebook computer priced at {99,000 Rupees}.
What I normally do when I see a currency that I can’t translate to U.S. Dollars off the top of my head is to submit a Google query. So I Googled “99000 rupees in USD”, thinking I would get a fairly accurate conversion. I didn’t, so I had to visit a foreign exchange trading website for the approximate value in dollars, which was given as $2483.69.
For some reason I also put “99000 rupees” into Google News and by chance got an article reporting that a four-door electric car called the Tara Tiny has just gone on sale in India for the same price. This is pretty amazing. According to the article:
This car was developed by Tara International, some of the features on the car are pretty basic but come on what do you want for the price a Rolls Royce, the Tara Tiny can seat 2 people and can be recharged daily at 220 volts through 15 amp sockets, a 8 hour charge enables the cars to travel 80 – 100 kilo meters. {sic}
The Tara Tiny looks as incredibly cheap as its price to me, from the photos I’ve seen. However, I think we should judge the car the same way most of us judged the MacBook Air when it first came out: don’t criticize it until you see one up close.
I wonder if my friend Sesh will comment on the Tara Tiny, since I doubt I’ll see one in the USA for quite some time.