Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
$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!)
It has a HDMI port
It also has an analogue TV out.
We don't even know how much RAM will it have
The $25 version will have 128Mb, and there's a $35 with 256Mb.
whether it will run Linux
It will run Linux, originally the hope was to run Ubuntu but with their restricted memory footprint they're having to go with a version of Debian instead. Amazing what you can learn when you watch the full video and actually listen to it.
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
or that Mensa has really low standards
If you've only just realised that, you've never met a Mensa member before. It's a club for people who define themselves by their intelligence, yet are so insecure about said intelligence that they require affirmation by membership of a club that is `exclusive' to people who manage to get a rather mediocre score on a fairly trivial test.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
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.
Shut it, n00b. ;)
Shouldn't that info be on the WEBSITE?
It is.
Don't you check your "facts" before posting them online?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
as it's a UK thing (and the price I've always seen was 25 pounds, not 25 US dollars) the price in Poland should be the same+shipping
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
The funniest thing about MENSA is what it means in Spanish. :-) Yeah they're so smart nobody noticed they joined the stupid club.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
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.
I joined when I was about 17 out of curiosity; the people I met were mostly lacking any social skills, kind of awkward to be around and lacking any sense of humour.
Sounds very much like slashdot then.
Slashdot has a sense of humor, just look at how Unicode is handled!
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
You young un's. Always arguing when us old-timers are trying to get some shut-eye... :)
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