$25 Computer may spark a Revolution

Computers have evolved in the past 60 years from room-sized machines to mobile hand held devices.  Prices also shrunk with the machine size, so it’s no surprise that cheap and pervasive computing is entering mainstream options.

Raspberry Pi is a linux box the size of a credit card that is scheduled to go on sale before the end of this February.  It boasts multi-media features of an original Xbox console, general processing power of a Pentium II/III, and 1080p video playback.  It includes a single USB port and 128 MB of memory.  You can spend an extra $10 to get two USB ports, 256MB memory, and 10/100 Ethernet.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a Cambridge-based charitable body set up to produce the Raspberry Pi computers.  Eben Upton is the director and he predicts that within a year’s time everyone will be making money from ultra cheap computers and low-cost computing.  The foundation hopes to increase the shift by encouraging manufacturers and hobbyist computer makers to make their own low-cost computers by open sourcing the design of the Raspberry Pi board.  Upton has gone as far as to say that he hopes someone would steal his idea.

Computer chips with very low manufacturing costs have processing muscle to provide what consumers want.  Information processing’s shrinking price makes it economically viable to embed computers in devices today, rather than replace entire high priced computer systems.  The Raspberry Pi will be placed on a satellite to see how well it functions in space.  Other uses include controlling robots, running home media centers, and automation applications.  Children can learn to code with languages such as C or Python with ultra cheap computers.  Upton hopes Raspberry Pi will influence the evolution of devices so they end up open source and affordable rather than closed and expensive.

What would you do with your own $25 computer?  Send your ideas and questions to me at [email protected]  subject: Indian Time Computer Corner and maybe you will inspire future stories about your computer adventures.

References

Raspberry Pi. Retrieved online February 20th from http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs