"The  Census Bureau will tell a House panel today that it will drop plans to use handheld computers to help count Americans for the 2010 census, increasing the cost for the decennial census by as much as $3 billion, according to testimony the Commerce Department secretary plans to give this afternoon."

[That means the cost increased by around $8/person to count, and classify, each of us with a paper-based census.]

HTC Census Phone Specifications:

• Dual-band CDMA/EV-DO device
• WiFi; Phone Connector; miniUSB; Bluetooth
• No microphone or speakerphone built-in
• 6.1 x 3.1 x 1.4 inches (154 x 79 x 29 mm); 12.3 oz (350 g)
• QVGA touch display (240x320); 3.5 Inches
• Windows Mobile 5 OS for PPC
• Intel Bulverde 416MHz processor
• GPS with Sirf Star III chip [neat to way to verify and monitor census enumerators, mashups possibilities would have been awesome]
• SD slot for memory
• Fingerprint reader [I'm guessing this is for data security?]
• Data connection only device [device does not allow voice calls, only data transmissions]

How Much is a Billion? [from about.com]

• If we wanted to pay down a billion dollars of the US debt, paying one dollar a second, it would take 31 years, 259 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds.
• A tightly-packed stack of new $1,000 bills totaling $1 billion would be 63 miles high. In comparison, jet planes fly at 30,000 - 40,000 feet (5.7 - 7.7 miles high).
• About a billion minutes ago, the Roman Empire was in full swing. (One billion minutes is about 1,900 years.)
• About a billion hours ago, we were living in the Stone Age. (One billion hours is about 114,000 years.)
• About a billion months ago, dinosaurs walked the earth. (One billion months is about 82 million years.)
• A billion inches is 15,783 miles, more than halfway around the earth (circumference).
• The earth is about 8,000 miles wide (diameter), and the sun is about 800,000 miles wide, not quite a million.

Total cost of the 2010 census to between $13.7 billion and $14.5 billion [from nextgen.com]

"Gutierrez said reverting to a paper-based census, in addition to other costs not associated with the handhelds, is expected to increase the cost of the 2010 census to between $2.2 billion and $3 billion through fiscal year 2013. That would bring the total cost of the 2010 census to between $13.7 billion and $14.5 billion. He said the bureau would need an increase of $160 million to $230 million for fiscal 2008 to cover costs associated with returning to paper, with an additional $600 million to $700 million for fiscal 2009. Gutierrez added that the majority of the cost increases would occur in 2010."

[So it actually costs somewhere around $37/person to count and classify each of us, or around 7 hours of minimum-wage labor.]

[It looks like the made the right choices: they tested years in advance, and when they knew they couldn't add the new 400 requirements, and meet their deadline. So they decided stopped the project. There are worse endings a project can have.]

[I wonder if the "Real ID Act" is meant to handle the Census as well.]

[I was pretty excited when I first heard about this projects goal of mobilizing the US Census, especially when I learned it would be done using Windows Mobile devices. I'm not surprised the project was ended considering the development team was faced with 400 new requirements this late in the game, with an already booked schedule. The US Census is used for many, many demographic and statistical tasks. We do a lot more than simple count the number of Americans. And I think that is the challenge, that stopped the project from making it to the finish line. Big government, requires big software, which is hard to do on small devices.]