It almost doesn’t seem possible, but UK game developer David Braben has created a fully functional PC the size of a USB thumb drive that only costs $25.
You heard that right, $25.
The PC has an HDMI port attached to one end of the “drive” to plug into a monitor while the other side of the drive has a USB port to connect a keyboard. Obviously, with only one USB port, you can’t plug a mouse in a the same time, but it looks like the “Raspberry Pi” PC is able to be hooked up to a USB hub to allow for mice and even peripherals like a digital camera to be attached as well.
According to Geek.com, Raspberry Pi is not too shabby in the horsepower department:
It uses a 700MHz ARM11 processor coupled with 128MB of RAM and runs OpenGL ES 2.0 allowing for decent graphics performance with 1080p output confirmed. Storage is catered for by an SD card slot.
As for the OS it runs, you can probably guess that it runs Linux to keep costs down further.
Braben hopes the Raspberry Pi PC will be used in schools to help younger children learn more of how computers work from a hardware standpoint and also learn some basic programming skills. Most kids are learning how to use word processors and presentation makers, but he feels they could benefit from learning actual computer science as well.
He hopes to be distributing the $25 PC within the next 12 months via the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
It’s pretty amazing that a single engineer managed to create a fully functional PC for such a low cost especially in light of movements like Nicholas Negroponte’s OLPC initiative trying to get children of developing nations $100 laptops. Granted, Braben’s device is just the computing portion without input devices or a screen and it’s not in mass production yet. It’ll be interesting to see what the final product looks like and costs, but if all goes as planned it sounds like the Raspberry Pi could have a place in helping developing nations catch up on technology and education as well.
via Geek.com
