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The Raspberry Pi Foundation is planning on revitalising computing amongst young people by bringing back the good old days of tinkering around with programmable computers.
Production has begun for the credit card sized PC, which has an ARM GNU/Linux box that can be plugged into a TV and keyboard. Its system on chip is a Broadcom BCM2835.
The Raspberry Pi is powered by a 5v micro USB lead or 4xAA batteries and has the ability to handle spreadsheets, word-processing, games and Blue-ray quality video playback.
With a drop-off in computing skills and interest amongst young people after the introduction of consoles and the explosion of the internet, gone were the days of learning the ins and outs of your Amiga, Commodore 64 or Spectrum ZX. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is hoping this tiny PC will encourage youngsters to get back into modifying, programming and generally messing around with their own personal computer.
"We want to see cheap, accessible, programmable computers everywhere; we actively encourage other companies to clone what we’re doing. We want to break the paradigm where without spending hundreds of pounds on a PC, families can’t use the internet. We want owning a truly personal computer to be normal for children. We think that 2012 is going to be a very exciting year,” said Raspberry Pi Foundation volunteer, “Liz”.
The Raspberry Pi will be available in two models, model A will cost £16 and model B (which has an Ethernet port) will cost £23.
