$25 Computer

PC Magazine

You might not be able to play Portal 2 on it, but a new product from the British nonprofit Raspberry Pi Foundation aims to put a working computer into children’s hands for the ultra-low cost of $25 per device. [..] For average consumers, don’t expect this computer to look anything like what you’re used to seeing on your desk, in your lap, or stuffed in your messenger bag. [..] But it’s certainly a computer. In fact, the 700-MHz ARM11 processor slapped on to the tiny piece of silicon, roughly the size of a USB stick, is a faster chip than what was originally found in Apple’s iPhone 3G—just to put it into perspective.

A total of 128 megabytes of SDRAM joins the processor, allowing the super-tiny system to run a variety of Linux versions. [..] “In theory, they could be given away to the child, with other ways of funding it,” said Braben in a YouTube interview. “What they would do with it is they would be able to engage in a lot of things that we’re all consumers of but not actually creators of: Understanding how you put together little scripts that might run websites, that might look at things like Facebook and Twitter, also email.”