Computer which costs $25!

[evilsatan]

Game developer David Braben has created a computer that’s about the size of a flash drive — and it’ll most likely cost less than your last date.



Braben designed the device with the goal of having an extremely affordable computer that children across the world can access. It’s a similar goal the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project had — create an extremely affordable computer that children in both developing countries and first-world countries can get their hands on.

The device sports a version of Linux, an open-sourced operating system that has become increasingly popular in philanthropic causes like this because it’s free to install and distribute. It will likely ship with some variation of Ubuntu, a very popular Linux distribution that has a huge development community, according to tech news site Geek.com.

“In theory, they could be given away to the child, there would be other ways of funding it,” Braben said in an interview with BBC. “They would be able to engage with a lot of things that we are all consumers of but not necessarily creators of — understanding how you put together little scripts that might run on websites and filters.”

The device has a 700-megahertz ARM processor and 128 megabytes of RAM. To put that in perspective, that’s about half as much memory as most smartphones today, which also sport processors that usually clock in at around 1 gigahertz. So it’s slightly weaker than a smartphone. There’s an SD card slot on the device that handles any storage, and it can output video and other images at 1080p resolution. It has a USB-out port that lets owners plug in a keyboard and an HDMI-out port that can connect to an HDMI-enabled television or monitor.

He said he hopes the device will be available to the public in around a year. Based on the components, the device will cost somewhere between £10 and £15, or around $25. It will be distributed through a charitable organization called the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote computer science in schools.

Source

[Godscrasher]

Thats amazing...No way does that seem to have all that gear on it, but brilliant all the same.

[Over Carl]

As much as I'm not an expert on this kind of stuff I'm calling bollox. Look at the size of a gpu that can barely handle 780p and you will see my point.

[Mule]

As much as I'm not an expert on this kind of stuff I'm calling bollox. Look at the size of a gpu that can barely handle 780p and you will see my point.

Handling 1080p would be fine as long as it wasn't anything too intensive and with it's other specs (700-megahertz ARM processor and 128 megabytes of RAM) it couldn't be. I'm not sure why you'd need 1080p on such a low spec system though.

[Over Carl]

My pc has an nvidia quadro fx1700 - tried to watch some 720p stuff on it and it looked like shite. It also has a xeon e5430 overclocked to 3.2. If that thing manages to do that I may chuck my pos in the skip.

[Mule]

My pc has an nvidia quadro fx1700 - tried to watch some 720p stuff on it and it looked like shite. It also has a xeon e5430 overclocked to 3.2. If that thing manages to do that I may chuck my pos in the skip.

You're talking about films, games etc. When you're not displaying things in millions of colours or with the complex graphics processing that games need it shouldn't be hard. I doubt much processing power is needed to produce a 1080p image in 2 colours, though, like I said, I can't understand why you'd want to. I expect it's just a way of boasting it's capabilities when there's no real practical use for it.

[Over Carl]

Hmm, I think you may have a point, wouldn't be the first time we've seen misleading claims.

[DejaVu]

YouTube - Raspberry Pi - the £15 computer

In my day, we had a subject called Typing and that to me is what ICT has replace.

ICT has taken over peoples lives since you was at school pal. Not just 'Typing'. What a Bell End.
It just looks like an over sized USB Drive with crap attached to it - slow with a slim Linux OS? Yep...

I'd much prefer one of these (once it's released!)

Spoiler:

Build a Full HD 1080p, DTS 6 Channel Audio HTPC into something the size of a coke can and supposedly fast enough to run Windows 7 on. Gimmick you say!?

Stumbled on it when a mate wanted to put a PC into a Xbox360 box.
Source

[Thrush]

There is one single issue.

15 quid computer - Check
TV that supports HDMI - Doh!

[lloydi]

no mention of how its powered?

[blaggard]

no mention of how its powered?

Feckin great brick power supply!

[cosmicma]

There is one single issue.

15 quid computer - Check
TV that supports HDMI - Doh!

my thoughts exactly

it seems a non starter for me
if it's aimed at this country most kids have mobile phones capable of doing the same thing without having to plug em into a hdmi tv
if there aimed at poorer countries and they allready have a tv with hdmi they won't need it

i notice david brabens name crops up in the media every few years i think it's his way of keeping his name known

[WRATH OF BOD]

YouTube - Raspberry Pi - the £15 computer


ICT has taken over peoples lives since you was at school pal. Not just 'Typing'. What a Bell End.
It just looks like an over sized USB Drive with crap attached to it - slow with a slim Linux OS? Yep...

I'd much prefer one of these (once it's released!)

Spoiler:

Build a Full HD 1080p, DTS 6 Channel Audio HTPC into something the size of a coke can and supposedly fast enough to run Windows 7 on. Gimmick you say!?

Stumbled on it when a mate wanted to put a PC into a Xbox360 box.
Source

i think tha main thing he wants to do is get it small & cheap for the third world.
i dont think he wants to run full HHD stuff on it like movies..
just it can output to hdmi.
those thing in your picture with atom chips are all overthe place .
for around 100 quid, he is selling them under 20 quid.(maybe not as small but close)
so its not aimed at the likes of us who(most on here)like fast & powerfull pc & laptops for gaming & everyday tasks.
i hope its genuin.sure looks like it.
at the end of the day i think it looks like a tinsey board,thats the whole idea of those boards to develope hardware .
good luck i say

[tawny]

I dont understand why it needs to be so small? If it's a budget computer for the 3rd world I dont think they're bothered about it being pocket sized, more about whether they can afford it. Surely there must be some cheap second hand components out there for next to nothing that they can recycle in to PC's for them. Anyway, I think the $100 laptop is a better program than what this guy is aiming for as it also has a screen integrated.

[{{909}}]

i would imagine standardisation is better than a mixture of old components, even if they are cheaper. If this system goes into mass production it would have dedicated software that utilises everything efficiently.
A small unit like this could easily be adapted into other units too, stuck on the back of monitors etc, less wires, less stuff to go wrong.

[Mule]

I dont understand why it needs to be so small?

Cuts down on shipping costs, with something so cheap every little saving helps.

[tombott]

Fuck me you bunch of miserable shits.
This is exactly the sort of stuff we need, and he his bang on about ICT.
It's glorified typing at its best. Bring back BBC's, make kids learn how to program and hack again not churn out utter shite in Microsoft Office and .net

[evilsatan]

Fuck me you bunch of miserable shits.
This is exactly the sort of stuff we need, and he his bang on about ICT.
It's glorified typing at its best. Bring back BBC's, make kids learn how to program and hack again not churn out utter shite in Microsoft Office and .net

I was very disappointed when I took ICT for A level and all I was taught was to build a simple database in Access. I had hoped it would be about the inner workings of a PC, fault finding etc. I ended up with good grades but have never had to use them as all employers were looking for was experience. We need to promote innovation but in our schools all we promote is generic office work. Sad really.

[Goldberg]

Stumbled on it when a mate wanted to put a PC into a Xbox360 box.

Just go for a mini itx. Try www.mini-itx.com

I built a PC in a NES case once, I think I sold it to a member on here a few years back.

[tombott]

I was very disappointed when I took ICT for A level and all I was taught was to build a simple database in Access. I had hoped it would be about the inner workings of a PC, fault finding etc. I ended up with good grades but have never had to use them as all employers were looking for was experience. We need to promote innovation but in our schools all we promote is generic office work. Sad really.

This is exactly what I mean.
When I took GCSE Computer Science in 1993 we used BBC's and Archimedes.
We learnt to program in Basic, and got to do some call shit with Control modules on the BBC. The great thing about the BBC was the add-ons you could get for it.
We also learnt about stuff that was out of date then like punch cards etc, but it gave us a good knowledge of the development of computing.
We learnt binary and hex, and therefore did some basic machine code programming as well.
We learnt the differences between RAM & ROM, how silicon chips were made and how they worked.
We had the opportunity to strip down old machines to see the inner workings. Having spoken to my younger sister (born in 1991), they do nothing like this in ICT now.