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Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC
First time accepted submitter salcan writes "There is growing interest surrounding the Raspberry Pi Foundation and their promise of a PC that will cost just $25. We've seen how the OLPC has struggled to deliver a $100 laptop for developing countries, and yet Raspberry Pi is confident in delivering the $25 PC by November this year. Eben Upton, director of the foundation, recently gave a talk at Bletchley Park regarding Educating Programmers, which focused on the thinking behind the $25 PC."
"During the talk Eben explains that the $25 price point was decided upon because it is the cost of a textbook so it made sense. Students buy textbooks, so a PC priced the same is a natural fit and hopefully an easy purchase for them, their parents, or their school." [emphasis added]
Students also buy milk but it doesn't mean that therefore computers should cost the same as milk. I don't think that a real computer should be worth the same as one textbook because of the fact that many more than one textbook could be downloaded on it and thus much more money could be saved by children if that is really a fully functional general purpose computer that the story makes us believe it is. It is worth noting that unlike the $100 laptops, this computer is not complete. It doesn't have a keyboard, it doesn't have a display. It has a HDMI port - yes, that will help poor children who can't afford a computer more expensive than $25. Also, are they going to carry a plasma TV around to use it? Quite frankly I think that it would be a much better idea to offer a Fuzebox kit from Adafruit - a do-it-yourself retro video console kit with open source software and open source hardware - or even an Arduino kit with TV output. In this case however all we have seen so far is a promise to deliver a $25 embedded board which is nice but it can hardly be called a computer, and especially not a computer that poor children in developing countries would need the most. We don't even know how much RAM will it have, whether it will run Linux or even if it will be useful for anything more serious than hacking a simple embedded Linux project. Don't get me wrong, I think that embedded projects are a great way for children to learn how computers work. But this is not a substitute for a laptop, notebook or netbook that those children need. Even a tablet would be a better idea but we all know this is not going to happen because apparently taking a keyboard out of a netbook makes it somehow ten times more expensive. We need a cheap laptop, a fully functional, self contained computer that children can use instead of textbooks, not as just one of them.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
I can’t remember any of my textbooks costing around $25. I think $100 (€75) is the mean price.
Of course, this only validates their argument: if you are willing to spend $100 on a textbook, spending $25 on a pc for education is not a big hurdle.
First time I've heard this mentioned. This really is the successor to the BBC Micro!
FTA:
"Something we didn’t realize is that Raspberry Pi not only intend to make this PC work through a HDMI and DVI connection, they also want it plugged into old analog TVs just like kids managed with in the 80s. It also means you don’t need an up-to-date display in order to start playing with this device"
So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC? Whoa. Radical, dude.
I am convinced that I can always be convinced otherwise.
The Raspberry Pi isn't exactly the same thing -- it does not include a case, keyboard, LCD, or speakers. But, you can probably get all that stuff for another $25. So maybe the OLPC has a new partner.
$25 is less than the cost of most Arduino boards, if it's possible to add some digital/analogue inputs/outputs it could become electronics bloggers new favourite toy (at least for high power mains projects, I suspect Arduino will still have much better power consumption!)
So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC?
Becomes a server?
If 128MB version costs $25, why they didn't go with 2GB for $30 instead? $5 difference for almost "classic" web PC with mainstream OS (Ubuntu).
839*929
dohoho
Who cares that they can't afford what you try to sell them !! Who cares that they will strip the battery out to get high ??!! It's a 25$ PC !! By George, I THINK THEY GOT IT (didn't get it from me) !!
There are quite a of of nettops sold without anything but the 'box' and they still deserve to be called a PC.
quality wireless alarms and shutter door gate controllers
So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC?
Becomes a server?
A server with attached keyboard and monitor is a PC then?
A Mac Mini isn't a PC?
Of course not, it's a Mac. XD
(I know, I know...)
I want one of these and I can easily afford (and own) PC's worth 4-figures.
I don't know why, I just want one.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
If so many people use their PC for web browsing only, absolutely anything that is more power efficient ,portable and cheap should find its market and not only in third world countries .I saw a movie on youtube showing Quake 3 being played (and rather smoothly) on Raspberry PI, so it's not that slow.
quality wireless alarms and shutter door gate controllers
You raise a good point that a all-in-one solution, such as a laptop, would be ideal. But what's so interesting about the $25 PC is that it's not all-in-one, and encourages thinking outside the box. After spending a month or two toying around with Linux, students could be encouraged to explore cutting-edge technology by pushing all their Raspberry Pi computers together and building beowulf clusters, render farms, or protein folding simulators at very low cost. Or perhaps even create a next-generation videogame console with this PC at the heart!
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Given that the device has the specs of a thin client (PC station), which I can buy right now for as low as $22 (I've got one sitting on my desk right now that I purchased about a month ago for $30). Thin clients are absurdly cheap, can run linux and come in a very wide variety of different shapes, sizes and specs. The board shown in the article above is very similar to those inside a thin client machine.
The Raspberry Pi hardware doesn't do the same things as the OLPC does. The Raspberry doesn't include an form of input or output as part of the reference hardware. So, at that point we are basically selling a computing core, ram, and some storage for $25. If the students need monitors, mice & keyboards at each location, they may as well just carry around a USB thumb stick with a custom LiveOS and put the Pi or other processing core at the work station. That sounds a LOT like my son's middle school.
25USD? Probably only in the USA. I guess in Poland the price of the A/B models will be something like 75/100USD... Hooray global market!
Looks like a great project. I think a key though will be to have some well-written documentation or tutorials to go with it. For my first computer (Atari 800XL), my Dad just bought a book on BASIC and a book of type-in games, and it was going through those that encouraged me to learn and experiment. Hopefully they can get a hookup with O'Reilly or somebody to produce a companion volume.
Reeeally pie in the sky wish would be for a BBC series to go with it, a la The Computer Programme, Making the Most of your Micro and Micro Live. Never gonna happen sadly. :-(
It's a Unix system - I know this.
Now you're just being difficult! :)
unlike the $100 OLPC crap this does have a market. i would gladly pay $50 to $75 for such a system. ITX has been around a while too. although i can't think of how much or little success those boards have had. there are more than a handful of situations were a small, low power computer like that would be a help. however the cost is about the same as cheap off the shelf stuff. problem is that you really can only makes these things cheap by mass production. this is a problem if demand starts slow. one area i applaud apple on is marketing. although in this area screw 'em. last thing they want or support is users playing with their hardware. despite joining the intel drum circle. the current anti-hacker mentality has also helped to foster misconceptions about those who take on these projects. one thing i can tell you right now is never ever travel with any home brew projects. current mental state of our society is panic at unknown things. seen too many harassed about legit gear (like radios and test equipment) let alone the horror stories i have heard with people's creations being confused with bombs or other nefarious devices. people are stupid.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster.....
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of these...
Does it stop being a device that can Compute thing for an individual Person?
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So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC?
Becomes a server?
A server with attached keyboard and monitor is a PC then?
The monitor and related stuff is a kind of handicap... Let's call it a workstation, 'cause you'll have to work harder at keeping it going.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Is Eban Upton a relative of Kate Upton?
From the pic of what they showed, that's all I saw. The casing, as well as the display themselves would cost double that amount. And keyboard - I'm assuming one wants it to be somewhat ergonomic, instead of dumping old keyboards to this just b'cos it might be for kids in Uganda. I'm assuming that it has an ARM based SoC, plus some on-board RAM - presumably DRAM - and then some other controllers for external devices and interfaces. Also, how is the BOM of this $35 - that would be just the cost of everything, and the price typically has to be twice to recover costs, unless one wants to create another red-ink company.
That's probably OK for the next couple of years, while the digital TV switch is recent enough that people are still giving/throwing away their analog TVs. But by 2014-15, the cost of adding the analog TV interface to every motherboard just for the tiny few which will find new cheap analog TVs will not be worth it. Cheaper would be work on a cheap HDMI/analog downconverter. Which sounds like an excellent project from the HW community using a cheap motherboard like this one. By 2015 HDMI TVs will be cheap enough, and enough getting given/thrown away, that they'll probably be more plentiful and cheaper than the antique analog TVs still passing through the hands of collectors and luddites.
--
make install -not war
From what I can read, so far, nearly all of the commenters are missing the point. This is not intended as a "cheap PC" option in the same way that OLPC was meant to get laptops into the hands of third-world children; if you read up on it, it's intention is for use as a "standard platform" for learning programming techniques in a limited environment. People like David Braben grew up learning to write extremely efficient code because they had such limited memory to work with, such as the Sinclair ZX80/ZX81 which only had 16KB (NOT a typo, that's KB, not MB), the Acorn/BBC B with 32KB and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum with 48KB. There is a general feeling that current students are getting "sloppy" and presume they're always going to have GB's of memory to stretch out in, so they've created PI to encourage creative thinking without placing too much demand on the wallets of students.
It's easy, you just get them to sign a contract and get the rest of their money through data plans.
$25 dollar PC?
Try Goodwill, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Salvation Army, or any of a dozen local thrift shops. The best part is that by giving these old monitors new life, the charities win and we keep them out of landfills.
I teach some Unix system programming courses at a college. These might be a really good tool for that; for negligible cost, the students can have a fully-functional Linux box gives them real hardware root access, without the risk that they'll do any damage to anything.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
All it is is a processor, with some memory. No keyboard, no display, no wireless. You can't say 'Why is the cheap laptop 100$?'.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC? Whoa. Radical, dude.
That's called a "barebones" PC by online retailers.
If I were seeing an ad for this "PC" for $25, I'd expect a bolded asterisk with a footnote that said, "keyboard, mouse, monitor, hard drive, and ethernet/Wi-Fi port not included".
"Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" is a textbook costing $115 and has no economy edition for developing countries.
It is written by Peter Norvig, Google's Director of Research and a near gazillionaire. I'm not really sure why this is the case - a coauthor you say ?
Well then, we have Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp (one of the finest textbooks in computer science) singly written by said millionaire. It costs 90$.
It really doesnt matter if you have 25$ computers which are ostentatiously targetted at third world countries - it is beyond useless unless you have content. We already have $100 (retail) Android tablets commonly available in India - make content free if you really want to help.
in this case, that $5 difference can also be seen as a 20% increase in cost.
Karma: NaN
Wants:
Powerful enough to run Windows 7. (2 GHz anything)
1 gig memory (even if slowest memmory)
USB for Hard drive (let me choose it afterwards)
VGA and DVI output.
I would buy something along these lines for $50 any day. Mame box!
Here's another idea... ALLOW USED COMPUTER EXPORTS. Europol (the Police of Europe) just announced that used computer exporting "criminals" have been discovered to be Africans sorting through stuff rich people throw away, and sending it back to their families. Major study just released, documenting 220,000 tons of electronics imported into Ghana, show 85% reuse or repair-and-reuse (15% failure, not much higher than new store returns). Reducing the restrictions on used computer exports would accomplish the same thing, and buyers overseas would be less beholden to junk dealers who ship lower quality. Exaggerate Risk + Prohibition leads to Mexican Marijuana cartels, Al Capone, and "solutions" like this which cost more and work less well than a 3 year old computer.
Gently reply
I'm pretty sure they aren't going to replace their TVs unless they break. And even then, they'll go get it repaired before buying a new one.
Furthermore, an SDTV that can't be repaired will be replaced with an SDTV from a pawn shop or a charity shop. This is what HDTV geeks don't understand. But then, there are a lot of old CRT computer monitors, which would still work with an enhanced--definition (480p) VGA output.
Come on. This is so exciting... For $35 (these have network ports), I'll probably buy 10 of them just to start with. How many cool projects could you bang out starting with $35 hardware and a wall-wart? Fish tank controllers, alarm systems, packet radio systems, aurora monitoring stations, power monitoring systems, train set controllers, (really any R/C model controller remot-ified by radio), atmospheric clarity monitors, weather loggers... c'mon. The applications are limited only by your imagination.
Oh. Wait. I see the problem.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They've had $25 puters for years. They call it a tablet. It's just that they charge you $500 for it.
When these things come out I'm probably going to order 2 or 3 of them. I have friends that are interested in a super cheap computer, even if it runs something "crazy" like Linux. (Also, Windows 8 will have ARM support, so that's a possibility in the future anyway). I'd like to see these come bundled in a netbook type package for about $100. I think this kind of price point will get people to leave their comfort zone of Windows and try out other OSs.
Also, I hope that they document things enough that OpenBSD will add support. I'd love to use one of these as a router with pf
"We've seen how the OLPC has struggled to deliver a $100 laptop for developing countries, and yet Raspberry Pi is confident in delivering the $25 PC by November this year."
I know it's fun to rag on the OLPC but that comparison wasn't even a fair one. Tack on everything else to make it usable and able to withstand and operate in environments that aren't friendly to computers then you can compare it on price to the OLPC.
Finally, a computer your mom can afford!
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
You're a good example of the computer illiteracy that they're hoping to cure with this device.
The biggest flaw is you have to buy a DVI or HDMI capable display, a USB keyboard, USB mouse and a hub. all have to be bought new as what comes from the trash is PS/2 and VGA. you then need a USB to SATA or IDE adapter. Managing to not have all that recent and compact stuff not stolen is up to you.
So all in one it's better suited to hobbyism than low cost computing, you can buy a pentium 4 with 512MB, 17" CRT and PS/2 keyb/mouse for much cheaper than that.
a great use would be to use it as a homebrew console. I'm glad I've had a glance at TFA, as we can learn there's a much needed composite output! (can also serve for less than ideal but usable computing)
sadly quake 3 has lower requirements than web browsing, especially on the memory front. also if you swap on a USB stick, that will be incredibly slow and kill the thumb stick.
That's a very interesting distinction. Certainly touches on an important difference between university and "lower education".
But this is trying to over-specify "school" and "teach" to suit your purpose. In reality, "school" applies to universities, and "teach" applies to lecturing (and advising).
If your gripe is that "school", as you understood it in the context of the article, means "``lower'' education", then that's the point you should make. And I agree with you there -- investigation turns up evidence corroborating that this is what Braben means:
Within a few years, Braben says, every child could own one of these computers from age 11 until graduating high school.
(Quoted from an American publication.)
Be careful about getting lost in details, especially in reflexive defiance of those who contradict you. It drags everyone into the weeds.
No problem, I can supply them all day long. But two things need to be considered. 1st They won't run win7 or similar because the hardware specs will be ~5-10 years old, 2nd they won't all be the same because I will be trolling for deals from "PC recyclers".
Aka, at this point in history if someone doesn't have a PC, its probably not because they are too expensive to acquire. If you want to give children in Africa PC's the cheapest way is to divert a container full of PC's destined for some illegal recycling operation. One or two people can teach a kid how to fix an old PC in a matter of hours. Powering them, might be a different problem.
It's a computer, and it's yours, so it's a personal computer. It's for you to experiment with and play with.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As anyone who's studied Math and CS in the last 15+ years wants to know... what are these $25 textbooks you speak of?
I'm pretty sure his point was that it's unfair to compare the OLPC, a full netbook with built-in controls and a display, to the Raspberry Pi, which is an ARM dev board - like a tiny (but full-featured) PC mobo with the CPU and RAM installed.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A keyboard from 20 years ago will have the keys you need, but it won't have the interface you need, because the Raspberry Pi doesn't have PS2, just USB. But that's ok - a keyboard from 5 years ago is probably USB :-) Or for about $5 you can find a USB keyboard if you don't already have one.
And when I got my first computer (ok, at work, but it was the first one that I was in charge of) it didn't have a monitor either - the console was a Decwriter.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Then more for a mouse, and more for a keyboard, oh and something to display it on.
These are less functional then the old ZX80's
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The Raspberry Pi is less IBM PC compatible than a Mac. If the RP is a PC, so is the iPhone!
All 2M+ XO laptops in all the deployments run Linux. Development of the open source Fedora spin and the Sugar user interface for kids continues at a reasonable pace.
Stop spreading a meme that wasn't ever true.
=S