Thursday 1 March 2012

BBC News - The Raspberry Pi computer goes on general sale

You know, I really meant to give this a mention, yesterday.

About the Raspberry Pi going on sale, that is.

»»•««

Let’s see if I can give you a little background, shall I … ?

The designers of the Raspberry Pi* — a group of assorted computer scientists, tech-heads, programmers and others — are a group who’ve expressed their concerns — for some time, now — that Britain’s pool of computer bods isn’t as big as it should be.

Many of them, seemingly, my sort of age. A generation of Brits who grew up knowing if not everything about programming, could certainly do some very primitive coding in BASIC.

Something I think I only ever did to make me own Tunnels and Trolls character generator, just to give you an example.

But you take my point: here was a lot of it about!

It’s also something we’re — seemingly — losing.

Which is what the Raspberry Pi’s makers wanted to address: by making a cheap computer (£16 for the cheaper of the two, £22 for the more expensive and wireless-enabled one) that could be sold to schools and home users, hooked up to most modern TVs, and have a USB keyboard and mouse plugged into them.

Hopefully … ?

That’s something that’ll stimulate interest.

Here’s hoping it does well.












* Just in case you want one, yourself, the link to the site is here

1 comment:

Andy Shirling said...

Definitely intrigued by this, and by the alternatives I didn't know about which are already on sale. Not enough hours in the day is the only problem!