This is awesome. Video at the link. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17190334 News reports say the first production run sold out in minutes.
That is awesome! A $35 virtual playground that you can connect to almost any TV or monitor, keyboard, mouse, hook it up to a network, just brilliant! I would want one. What's exciting is that the open source world will play with this thing and build OSes, applications, just about anything, really, that you can do with a computer, and children who live in homes that have a TV but can't afford a computer, can make use of this. Simply wonderful! I was just thinking; I have a 5 year old niece who has a TV in her room, but her dad doesn't let her use his computer because it's so expensive he doesn't want it broken. I could buy her one of these, a wireless keyboard and a mouse, and she could use that TV as a computer, and learn how to program, among other things (she loves to watch me on my computer and she's fascinated with them). This would be perfect for such a situation!
It has HDMI output and supports high-definition video. You can also hook up any USB device to it. It's also 7 times cheaper than Apple TV. Interesting...
That means that you could hook up an external drive with movies and render the Apple TV and other digital media players useless. Cool!
Ya like Netflix? Then you're probably gonna need a Roku, as the Raspberry ain't set up for DRM. (I'd still like to get a bunch of them, though.)
I'd calm down guys, this seems more like a modern version of the home computers that were incredibly popular in the UK in the 1980's. Good for playing simple games and writing out long problems, not incredible productive. A modern BBC micro maybe.
Gimme a break! What you just pointed out is, in fact, its main selling feature. The thing is not meant to be a powerful PC nor has it been marketed as one. But the fact that it supports high def video input/output for only $35 is a big deal.
What do people do 90% of the time on the computer at home? Email, surf the web, watch movies, and that's about it. Maybe a little gaming (like on facebook), but generally not too terribly sophisticated. At $35 for the Raspberry, $100 for a monitor (assuming you don't have one laying around), $15 for a keyboard, $5 for a mouse (again, assuming you don't have those things laying around), and maybe a $20 for some speakers, you can easily afford to stick a PC in every room in your house.
Also, this time around there are going to be thousands of programmers itching to make software for it, more than willing to distribute it worldwide to anyone willing to try it out. OSes, apps, drivers, you name it. Need storage space? $30 will get you a 32GB SD card, and you're good to go.
Nifty and cheap, but there is already so much stuff out there designed to be educational I just don't know.
