More about Raspberry Pi

Early in the 1980s, affordable computing was a craze in the market. However, learning about them was a difficult process to the users. Machines such as Atare 400 and early Apples’ were already helping people in exploring the whole new world; giving rise to some of the pioneers in the computing world including the gaming industry.

That continued, till a lot of inventions took place in the tech world. One amongst them, is the – Raspberry Pi.

This credit card sized micro-microcomputer was developed by a UK based company. It has low power consumption and an incredibly cheap ARM based Linux system. And, the next big thing is, that it comes for a price of $35 excluding the local taxes. The main motive behind this is to help the new generation kids in learning the programming stuffs.

Impact of Raspberry Pi

This capable little PC can be used for displaying high definition videos as the GPU is capable of blu ray playback, using H.264 at 40MBits/Sec and it is trying to bring the concept that nothing is impossible. Weighing just 45g, though it lacks the general processing grunt, the performance can be compared with Pentium 2 with only little “swankier” graphics. And, if you still aren’t convinced what a Raspberry Pi can do for you, you got to read - 5 Things You Can Do With the New Raspberry Pi.

Availability

Featuring 356MB RAM, HDMI and audio outputs, USB port and flash card memory slot, there are two models available. The Model-A has just one USB port and no Ethernet port, while the Model B has two USB ports with an Ethernet port. Available in two outlets, Element14 and RS Components, this device has created a huge buzz in the market.

Having begun its’ delivery, Raspberry Pi has already received a plethora of laurels. Many user communities have tutorials, podcasts and even add-ons that can be added to the hardware part in their blogs.

The Expected Changes

It surely has the capability to bring a change in the open-source software world, for instance Aurduino and Linux are ruling the open-source software market. With the ‘getting started’ guide, the RaspberryPi has got a lot of attraction in the market. Altogether, at least a minimum of 3,50,000 pre-orders have been confirmed till now.

When it comes to educating the students, the RaspberryPi offers more than one field of interest. For instance, there will be some students who will be interested in developing the hardware part, while others may involve themselves in to coding part. The coding part can be done in two means - one can use the embedded level which is directed to the ARM core, and others can write in C or python in the Linux platform.

Scope of Improvement

However, there are not sufficient schools with the right staffs to support in educating the students in this platform. Influencing it in the schools will definitely take time. And once when it enters the class rooms, it has the potential to change the future of computing around the world. Though shipping to customers has started last week, this project has been going well in-spite of lack of optimized software.

Till then, let the competition wake up!