geekosystem

Good news for any Americans looking to do a DIY computer project on the cheap, the Raspberry Pi Model A is finally available for order here in the States. It's not as powerful as some of Raspberry Pi's bigger, slightly more expensive models like the Model B, but it's well suited for battery or even solar powered projects.

One of the major selling points of the Raspberry Pi is that delectable $35 price point. That's the high-end model at that price; they don't get more expensive than that. There's been some clamoring for a new model featuring 512MB worth of RAM, though. According to the folks behind the Raspberry Pi, it's one of the most common suggestions. Rather than crafting a new model with extra RAM and charging more for it, however, they've simply decided their old $35 Model B will include 512MB from here on in.

When the tiny $25 hobbyist computer, the Raspberry Pi, first took hold, manufacturing was relegated to China even though the Raspberry Pi Foundation is a U.K. charity. That's not exactly a far cry from how a large amount of companies handle their production, but Raspberry Pi production was sent over to China not because the Foundation wanted to cut costs, but because they needed to cut costs until the unit proved popular enough to be produced back in the U.K. Well, the Raspberry Pi proved popular enough, and with the help of Sony Wales, the Raspberry Pi is now being produced in the U.K. where the Foundation originally intended it to be.

Want to build your own computer using the super cheap guts provided by Raspberry Pi but don't know where to start? Ever wanted to work in a customized operating system you know like the back of your hand? You're in luck. Cambridge University in the UK is offering a series of free courses online that will teach you how to build your own OS for Raspberry Pi from scratch in just 12 (relatively speaking) easy steps. Finally, all of us computer illiterates who were convinced that even we could design a better OS than Vista will have a chance to prove it.

Taking pictures can be a hassle in this day and age. First you have to take them, then transfer them to a computer, and then put them wherever else you'd really like them. Imagine the pain that this forced process causes amateurs, let alone professional photographers. Thankfully, David Hunt, an Irish photographer, may have built a solution. Hunt has taken a Raspberry Pi and embedded it into a DSLR camera grip; when the camera takes a picture, it transfers immediately to his iPad's ShutterSnitch app.

Considering the Raspberry Pi is a competent -- albeit underpowered -- computer that costs only $25 at its lowest price point, and $35 for an upgraded version, the computer hobbyist market was instantly enthralled by the little guy ever since it was introduced. Sure, in this age of computing, it's a little difficult for the Raspberry Pi to do anything too complicated, and it also needs to be hooked up to a monitor (or remoted into) on top of that, but for $25, it's not like there's much of an investment to be made to play around with the thing. Since the Pi doesn't pack too powerful of a punch, one of its most prevalent limitations is what operating systems it can run; a computer can't be much of a computer without a way for people to interact with it. The company behind the little guy, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, provides Debian and Arch Linux distributions for their miniature computer. Now, however, if you wanted something a little less obscure, Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, will be hitting the Raspberry Pi sometime soon.

While at the London Science Museum, Google chairman Eric Schmidt announced that Google would help pay for 100 new science teachers and equip classrooms with Arduino kits and Raspberry Pi microcomputers. Those are some lucky, lucky kids.

We've been following the Raspberry Pi for quite some time, because how can you not follow the production and retail launch of a $25 fully functional computer? The little guy finally launched today, in the standard $25 model and a somewhat more powerful $35 model, made available at British companies RS Components and Premier Farnell, though as of this post, the sites are experiencing a heavy load and may not load properly. Due to the digital frenzy, the Raspberry Pi sold out in minutes, and users who missed the initial launch period were greeted with pre-order pages, but there's a bright side to the madness of the Pi: The cheaper $25 model has been given double the amount of RAM at no extra cost, bumped up to 256 megs.

The Raspberry Pi, everybody's favorite $25 PC, has finally gone into beta, and some of those beta boards are up for auction by the company on eBay. It is a $25 PC though, that's the selling point; how much could it possibly go for? Oh, I don't know, how about $2,714 (£1,750), and that's with 5 days remaining. For all of you who are screaming "That is missing the point!" right now, there are a couple of mitigating factors that make this all make a little more sense. First of all, these are limited edition, man. Haven't you ever taken a class in Economics? Also, 100% of the purchase price is going to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, devoted to promoting the study of computer science, so it's for a good cause.

The $25 PC, the Raspberry Pi, is on course to release in January, a little too late to be considered a holiday present. The tiny little guy runs Linux on an ARM processor, and comes complete with USB, an SD card slot (something my $999 year-old MacBook doesn't even have), and an audio and video out. A bit humorously, the $25 Raspberry Pi will launch with two configurations, a $25 model and a $35 model, with the $35 model doubling the RAM to 256 MB and adding an Ethernet port.

Quake 3 Arena is something of a classic. As such, it has been ported to a number of consoles, iOS (unofficially), and a version of it is even available to play in a browser online. Well, now you can add another device to the list, the $25 Raspberry Pi computer. That's right, the low-cost, high-portability computer that aims to bring affordable computing to everyone for the purposes of education and communication also plays a mean Quake 3.

It's worth clarifying that this $25 PC does not hobble along, letting you play Q3 at a crippled 3 frames per second or anything. The Raspberry Pi can handle Q3 at 1080p and 4x anti-aliasing while still churning out a respectable 10-30 fps. That may not sound like much, but most Q3 players will tell you that you don't want that anti-aliasing weighing down your frame-rate anyways, and with more modest settings, the Pi can run Q3 at very playable speeds. For a tiny computer intended mainly for Internet and text-processing, that's not bad at all.

Read on after the break for a video of the Rasberry Pi in action.

British game developer David Braben and like-minded collaborators have come together to form a nonprofit called Raspberry Pi which is devoted to promoting computer science education, particularly among younger students. Their proposed vehicle for accomplishing this, also called Raspberry Pi, is something of a small marvel: A $25 computer the size of a USB stick. With a USB port on one end and an HDMI/composite video connection at the other, the tiny PC comes equipped with 128 MB of SDRAM and a 700 MHz ARM processor -- not the heighth of speed, but faster than, say, the original iPhone processor. In the interest of keeping costs down while furthering education, Raspberry Pi comes preloaded with the Ubuntu operating system and free open software like Iceweasel, KOffice, and Python. Of course, there's not much one can do with a PC this barebones by itself: It requires either a touchscreen or a monitor/keyboard combo to plug into, though on the assumption that many families have TVs but not computers, this isn't as insurmountable a cost hurdle as it might be. The onus remains on Braben and associates to prove to educators that this can be mass-produced as cheaply as they say it can and that it has value in a classroom setting, but it could present exciting possibilities for ensuring that young students in school districts that can't necessarily afford state-of-the-art computer wings still have access to CS education.