Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC

First time accepted submitter salcan writes "There is growing interest surrounding the Raspberry Pi Foundation and their promise of a PC that will cost just $25. We've seen how the OLPC has struggled to deliver a $100 laptop for developing countries, and yet Raspberry Pi is confident in delivering the $25 PC by November this year. Eben Upton, director of the foundation, recently gave a talk at Bletchley Park regarding Educating Programmers, which focused on the thinking behind the $25 PC."

OLPC was a readily-usable laptop

[PhrostyMcByte]

The Raspberry Pi isn't exactly the same thing -- it does not include a case, keyboard, LCD, or speakers. But, you can probably get all that stuff for another $25. So maybe the OLPC has a new partner.

Re:

[LingNoi]

Your comment got me thinking. It's been years since the XO-3 tablet was announced, what the hell happened to that? Googling only gives me old news.

Re:

[Yvanhoe]

They lost a lot of support with their decision to switch to windows. It may have been the kiss of death

Re:

[Hamsterdan]

How can anyone be hurt by broken windows ?

Re:

[should_be_linear]

this idea always made more sense to me, give "base" PC to kids for (almost) free because there are lots of free keyboards, mouses, 15" LCD everywhere. Hell, we are creating mountins of it on daily basis. OLPC was too focused on children living in the middle of nowhere. But they are IMO not really concerned about computing anyway. We should give them ordinary mobile phones first, it is much more useful to them. This computer is covering way more people and use cases.

Re:

[Bert64]

Keyboards, Screens, Cases and Speakers are all devices that have not changed much in years...

A CRT from 15 years ago will be perfectly capable of displaying a useful resolution, and are often being given away. Plus this device is capable of output to a TV set, anything from a modern HDMI HDTV, down to an old analog set.
Speakers (or headphones) are widely available, old ones are often thrown out.
A keyboard from 20 years ago will have the same keys as a modern one, some people even prefer to use older keyboar

Re:

[JasterBobaMereel]

Laptop has all custom parts

R.Pi has no screen (use a TV or any screen you have), Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers, or Case ...so no custom parts ...

Assuming existing TV as monitor and headphones, you can pick up a USB Mouse and Keyboard for less than $10 ... what else do you need?

Re:

[1u3hr]

Since when can you get any display for $25?

There's plenty used. Eg, Craigslist; 17" for $5: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/sys/2534465454.html [craigslist.org] And lots of free ones.

Re:

[tibit]

GRRR! Stop it. You're scamming people. Do you sell it? Please. Look at the reviews, idiot.

Those "cables" don't work. HDMI is a digital signal. You need at least an integrated HDMI-to-RGB single-chip to convert it to a VGA signal. Those cables only work if there already are RGB analog signals on the HDMI connector. They are present only on very few devices. XBOX comes to mind. This $25 computer does not have a DAC anywhere that would produce analog RGB signals, they are not present on the HDMI connector, and

Since when can you get any display for $25?

[jabberw0k]

Try Goodwill, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Salvation Army, or any of a dozen local thrift shops. The best part is that by giving these old monitors new life, the charities win and we keep them out of landfills.

Re:

[julesh]

Since when can you get any display for $25? Even a 14" monitor would cost a bundle.

Device has TV out. This simplifies things. But even if it didn't, you're wrong. Reasons for these statements:

1. most students probably already have access to a TV.
2. old CRT TVs change hands either free or for very little money on a very regular basis. Check out your local freecycle/freegle list... you probably won't be waiting long until a 14" TV comes up.
3. My local computer shop sells second hand reconditioned CRT monitors for almost no money. They do 17" for £5 (about $7) or larger sizes for

Re:

[biodata]

Have you ever visited your local recycling centre/city dump? Ours is completely awash with perfectly fine looking displays of all shapes and sizes that are only there because someone bought something thinner and probably work just fine. The same is true for keyboards, and probably mice (and rats).

The new Arduino

[AC-x]

$25 is less than the cost of most Arduino boards, if it's possible to add some digital/analogue inputs/outputs it could become electronics bloggers new favourite toy (at least for high power mains projects, I suspect Arduino will still have much better power consumption!)

Re:The new Arduino

[slim]

at least for high power mains projects

"The device should run well off 4xAA cells" [raspberrypi.org]

Although I agree Arduino probably will use less power. Different design goals.

Re:

[alephnull42]

if it's possible to add some digital/analogue inputs/outputs it could become electronics bloggers new favourite toy

See here http://elinux.org/RaspberryPiBoard#Provisional_specification [elinux.org]
"General-purpose I/O (About 16 3v3) and various other interfaces, brought out to 1.27mm pin-strip"
... obviously provisional...

Re:The new Arduino

[jc79]

PS: "analogue"? Really? Colour me modernist, but that's a rather archaic spelling even for an Englishman.

Not an archaic spelling. A correct spelling.

Re:The new Arduino

[tibit]

Kudos for saying a correct spelling instead of oft heard the correct spelling.

Problem

[should_be_linear]

If 128MB version costs $25, why they didn't go with 2GB for $30 instead? $5 difference for almost "classic" web PC with mainstream OS (Ubuntu).

Re:Problem

[White Flame]

They're making a 256MB version with additional ports for $35. I doubt they could put 2GB of RAM on there; most of these ARM SoCs are intended to use stacked chips, and I don't think they've gone beyond 256MB in the stacked form factor.

Even if the chip does allow using a non-stacked configuration, that's still extra board real estate & wiring which increases the complexity of the build, and $5 isn't going to get you 2GB of memory anyway.

Re:

[should_be_linear]

I guess problem is funding, they are doing great job with existing components, but obviously it is not possible for them to design SoC around ARM. However, likes of Google are able to do that and give PCs (properly configured for their services) for free. Also, this is neat for display/TV makers, they can have "default" PC in every display they create. One advanced SoC chip, USB and LAN port, microSD port as HDD, WiFi antenna built in, all that is minimal additional costs (way below $25, depending on SoC ge

Re:

[Alranor]

More likely is that the TV makers will look at this and put a chip in the display to make sure that you're properly licensed to be viewing whatever content you're passing to it, and DRM strikes again.

Re:

[Jeng]

I was thinking TV makers would put this in their displays as a way to provide low cost internet capabilities.

Only Sony would add a DRM chip in their products to specifically counter a low usage device such as this.

Re:

[sapphire wyvern]

Probably people who want to order thousands of them (eg, one for every student). It's all very well being able to buy a handful of used PCs off eBay for the same price per unit, but it would be expensive to support a collection of 25,000 used PCs, all with different hardware configurations.

Re:

[jc79]

Will your used pc off ebay fit in your pocket and run off 4xAA batteries? No? Oh well. Looks like I'll be buying a few Raspis then.

Want.

[neokushan]

I want one of these and I can easily afford (and own) PC's worth 4-figures.

I don't know why, I just want one.

Re:

[smallfries]

Because they're fun? I did development on a board with a similar spec about ten years ago - back then it was an expensive and unusual board in a research lab. The difference that comes from a "disposable" price-point is amazing. I'm sure there will be a huge number of fun projects with these boards outside of their target educational market. If you want to go for the luxury $100 market then gumstix [gumstix.com] are quite nice boards to play with.

Using PC for web browsing only

[darekgla]

If so many people use their PC for web browsing only, absolutely anything that is more power efficient ,portable and cheap should find its market and not only in third world countries .I saw a movie on youtube showing Quake 3 being played (and rather smoothly) on Raspberry PI, so it's not that slow.

Unfair comparison

[JBHarris]

The Raspberry Pi hardware doesn't do the same things as the OLPC does. The Raspberry doesn't include an form of input or output as part of the reference hardware. So, at that point we are basically selling a computing core, ram, and some storage for $25. If the students need monitors, mice & keyboards at each location, they may as well just carry around a USB thumb stick with a custom LiveOS and put the Pi or other processing core at the work station. That sounds a LOT like my son's middle school.

Re:

[slim]

If the students need monitors, mice & keyboards at each location, they may as well just carry around a USB thumb stick with a custom LiveOS and put the Pi or other processing core at the work station. That sounds a LOT like my son's middle school.

I think the vision is for the kid to be coding at home. The people running the project will remember Western kids learning to code in front of the family TV, hunched over a home computer on the floor. Having to go to a lab to do this is not as good.

Documentation, Documentation, Documentation.

[benbean]

Looks like a great project. I think a key though will be to have some well-written documentation or tutorials to go with it. For my first computer (Atari 800XL), my Dad just bought a book on BASIC and a book of type-in games, and it was going through those that encouraged me to learn and experiment. Hopefully they can get a hookup with O'Reilly or somebody to produce a companion volume.

Reeeally pie in the sky wish would be for a BBC series to go with it, a la The Computer Programme, Making the Most of your Micro and Micro Live. Never gonna happen sadly. :-(

Kill Your TV

[Doc Ruby]

Something we didn’t realize is that Raspberry Pi not only intend to make this PC work through a HDMI and DVI connection, they also want it plugged into old analog TVs just like kids managed with in the 80s.

That's probably OK for the next couple of years, while the digital TV switch is recent enough that people are still giving/throwing away their analog TVs. But by 2014-15, the cost of adding the analog TV interface to every motherboard just for the tiny few which will find new cheap analog TVs will not be worth it. Cheaper would be work on a cheap HDMI/analog downconverter. Which sounds like an excellent project from the HW community using a cheap motherboard like this one. By 2015 HDMI TVs will be cheap enough, and enough getting given/thrown away, that they'll probably be more plentiful and cheaper than the antique analog TVs still passing through the hands of collectors and luddites.

Pawn shop SDTVs

[tepples]

I'm pretty sure they aren't going to replace their TVs unless they break. And even then, they'll go get it repaired before buying a new one.

Furthermore, an SDTV that can't be repaired will be replaced with an SDTV from a pawn shop or a charity shop. This is what HDTV geeks don't understand. But then, there are a lot of old CRT computer monitors, which would still work with an enhanced--definition (480p) VGA output.

Missing the point...

[YenRug]

From what I can read, so far, nearly all of the commenters are missing the point. This is not intended as a "cheap PC" option in the same way that OLPC was meant to get laptops into the hands of third-world children; if you read up on it, it's intention is for use as a "standard platform" for learning programming techniques in a limited environment. People like David Braben grew up learning to write extremely efficient code because they had such limited memory to work with, such as the Sinclair ZX80/ZX81 which only had 16KB (NOT a typo, that's KB, not MB), the Acorn/BBC B with 32KB and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum with 48KB. There is a general feeling that current students are getting "sloppy" and presume they're always going to have GB's of memory to stretch out in, so they've created PI to encourage creative thinking without placing too much demand on the wallets of students.

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

It won't make any difference. They will get put on corporate desktops with 4 gigs of RAM. Somebody will decide to do the job with MVC and before you know it you have 100000 source files and a few gigabytes of code.

Re:

[biodata]

and in that 1k people still managed to create code to turn their computers into maze-solving robots, along with the addition of a chassis, motors, wheels, etc: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7744887363033563393 [google.com]

Re:

[julesh]

And that included the RAM needed for the video display (which BTW was also handled by the CPU, not a dedicated video chip; therefore it had a "fast mode" where video output was switched off).

This isn't quite true: the ZX81 video output was produced by the ULA chip, but this chip used the CPU as what we would today call a DMA controller to pull the data out of memory while it snooped on the bus to interpret it, hence the CPU was unavailable while it was producing each video line.

The design was somewhat improved, but still not completely fixed, for the Spectrum: the ULA accessed memory directly, but put the CPU into halt mode if it attempted to access memory in the 16K->32K region while video

Very useful as a teaching tool

[Goonie]

I teach some Unix system programming courses at a college. These might be a really good tool for that; for negligible cost, the students can have a fully-functional Linux box gives them real hardware root access, without the risk that they'll do any damage to anything.

Re:

[renoX]

>the students can have a fully-functional Linux box

The GPU's driver is a blob so I wouldn't say "fully-functionnal", sadly.

Doesn't compare

[Thomas Charron]

All it is is a processor, with some memory. No keyboard, no display, no wireless. You can't say 'Why is the cheap laptop 100$?'.

Re:Less than a "PC"

[wolfie123]

So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC? Whoa. Radical, dude.

Re:

[Macrat]

So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC?

Becomes a server?

Re:

[AliasMarlowe]

So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC?

Becomes a server?

A server with attached keyboard and monitor is a PC then?

The monitor and related stuff is a kind of handicap... Let's call it a workstation, 'cause you'll have to work harder at keeping it going.

Re:

[Raenex]

So, when i unplug my peripherals from my computer case, it ceases to be a PC? Whoa. Radical, dude.

That's called a "barebones" PC by online retailers.

If I were seeing an ad for this "PC" for $25, I'd expect a bolded asterisk with a footnote that said, "keyboard, mouse, monitor, hard drive, and ethernet/Wi-Fi port not included".

Re:

[slim]

A Mac Mini isn't a PC?

Re:

[Patman64]

Of course not, it's a Mac. XD

(I know, I know...)

Re:

[mwvdlee]

Does it stop being a device that can Compute thing for an individual Person?

Re:Cost of a textbook?

[Tompko]

It has a HDMI port

It also has an analogue TV out.

We don't even know how much RAM will it have

The $25 version will have 128Mb, and there's a $35 with 256Mb.

whether it will run Linux

It will run Linux, originally the hope was to run Ubuntu but with their restricted memory footprint they're having to go with a version of Debian instead. Amazing what you can learn when you watch the full video and actually listen to it.

Re:

[Bert64]

Also if your really poor, you probably don't want to buy a new monitor when an old one can be had for little or no money, and will work just fine. Same for keyboards and mice, new ones are cheap enough but used ones are often thrown out in large quantities and work perfectly well.

Re:

[Joce640k]

I'm not sure how many "old" monitors have HDMI ports.

Re:Cost of a textbook?

[mwvdlee]

Shouldn't that info be on the WEBSITE?

It is.
Don't you check your "facts" before posting them online?

Re:

[somersault]

Ah, your posting history shows that you're probably not trying to troll, and that you have been on a Slashdot hiatus since 2008. My apologies.

PS your bio should say "sexist", not "sexiest".

Re:

[somersault]

Yeah, I didn't check the journals or the actual content of the previous posts. Maybe they all have obviously stupid mistakes, but some of the mods were too stupid to notice.

Since putting "troll, trooowllll" in my signature, I've had less irate posters lambasting me for having an opinion, it's nice.

I guess I do troll slightly sometimes myself (especially with the "Americaaaa, fuck yeah!" types), but mostly I'm being genuine. My sig is just a quote from my favourite Boxxee song, rather than an indicator than

I humbly disagree.

[Sheetrock]

You raise a good point that a all-in-one solution, such as a laptop, would be ideal. But what's so interesting about the $25 PC is that it's not all-in-one, and encourages thinking outside the box. After spending a month or two toying around with Linux, students could be encouraged to explore cutting-edge technology by pushing all their Raspberry Pi computers together and building beowulf clusters, render farms, or protein folding simulators at very low cost. Or perhaps even create a next-generation vide

Re:Cost of a textbook?

[TheRaven64]

or that Mensa has really low standards

If you've only just realised that, you've never met a Mensa member before. It's a club for people who define themselves by their intelligence, yet are so insecure about said intelligence that they require affirmation by membership of a club that is `exclusive' to people who manage to get a rather mediocre score on a fairly trivial test.

Re:

[somersault]

Never met a member.. but I did come to a similar kind of conclusion when I saw the website, and the fact you have to pay to be a member.. nice little racket they have going on there.

Re:

[Inda]

They used to regularly tout the National Association for Gifted Children (UK) for new members. My parents refused to let me join Mensa because of the high cost and the fact that it did indeed seem like a big scam.

The member I met had a neck-beard. I remember the bot he bought with him; I was truly impressed. The complete lack of social humour made me nervous. I was 10.

Re:

[stx23]

I joined when I was about 17 out of curiosity; the people I met were mostly lacking any social skills, kind of awkward to be around and lacking any sense of humour. Usenet's rec.org.mensa had very similar people populating/trolling it so I got out of any association with them kind of sharpish.
They're the World's smartest idiots IMO.

Re:Cost of a textbook?

[Abstrackt]

I joined when I was about 17 out of curiosity; the people I met were mostly lacking any social skills, kind of awkward to be around and lacking any sense of humour.

Sounds very much like slashdot then.

Slashdot has a sense of humor, just look at how Unicode is handled!

Re:

[mwvdlee]

I've never gotten quite what Mensa is supposed to be. Apart from an artificial ego-boost, why would anybody want to join Mensa. What is it they actually do? It's only perceived value seems to be from the membership itself. Why bother joining them at any IQ-score?

Re:Cost of a textbook?

[CODiNE]

The funniest thing about MENSA is what it means in Spanish. :-) Yeah they're so smart nobody noticed they joined the stupid club.

Re:

[Alioth]

It only has meaning in a few Latin American countries. From the DRAE:

menso, sa.
1. adj. coloq. Ec., El Salv., Hond., Méx. y Nic. tonto (â- falto de entendimiento o razÃn).

Re:

[gatzke]

Who the hell has a low UID? Are you smoking something? Or did I miss a few million registrations?

Back in my hole. Get off of my lawn!

Re:

[slim]

Shut it, n00b. ;)

Re:Cost of a textbook?

[mikael]

You young un's. Always arguing when us old-timers are trying to get some shut-eye... :)

Re:

[Dr_Barnowl]

Yeah, you were one digit off a palindromic UID. You must have been gutted.

Re:

[MrDoh!]

With the creator of Elite, then yeah, it /is/ rather reminiscent isn't it? So many schoolkids in the UK got started with the Beeb, I even got into minor 6502 ASM with that inline coding you could do.
This PI thing really does feel like a return to form, funny how things go around in circles, from Beeb, to ARM, to PI. Hopefully education sees these as the fantastic opportunity they are.

Re:

[slim]

First time I've heard this mentioned. This really is the successor to the BBC Micro!

Fruit-based name.
Comes in "Model A" and "Model B" versions

It just needs a picture of an owl on it now.

Re:

[TheRaven64]

Fruit-based name.

Are you confusing Apple and Acorn, or did Acorn release some computers that I missed? I remember the Atom, Electron, BBC Models A and B, BBC Master, and Archimedes, before they started on the A-number naming scheme, but I don't recall any with a fruit-based name.

Re:

[MROD]

Of course, the acorn is the fruit of the oak tree. So, technically, Acorn was named after a fruit.

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

Ar high school we had half a dozen Apple ][s and an equal number of an Asian knock off called the Orange.

Re:

[AliasMarlowe]

Fruit-based name.

I'm still hoping for the Banana jr. [toastytech.com] series to be revived...

Re:

[phaggood]

Because old VGA monitors can be found in resale shops and garage sales for $5 (or free if someone just put it on the curb with a sign saying as much) I don't think many users of the $25 PC will have to resort to using an old analog TV (and I'd bet an old analog TV is probably much harder to come by these days than an old VGA monitor).

Re:

[LordSnooty]

As new, perhaps, but I imagine that in my country about 95% of households will have an analogue TV which is now crying out for a use. (If they didn't send it to the tip having upgraded to HD)

Re:

[Darkness404]

Yep, and often the old CRTs support higher resolutions than an LCD, especially if you just buy a cheap LCD.

Re:

[Gordonjcp]

It's also worth pointing out that unlike the US, pretty much all the TVs in the UK and EU have at least one RGB connection. This means you can get a really nice crisp picture from your TV, far better than with the composite connections.

Re:

[jellomizer]

Old TV's are horrible. I don't think you will be doing anyone a favor with the TV hookup. Even Text mode, for it to look good on a TV you will need 40x25 text (320x200) resolution graphics. Unless you are going to emulate Apple ][ apps or some old DOS applications (even a lot of DOS apps will not run well on the TV display).

High Resolution (640x200) is used for the old 80x25 text mode, and if you use that on a TV you get very fuzzy text. (Game makers at the time took advantage of that to increase the colo

Re:

[Savantissimo]

No, it's bad but not that bad. PAL is 625 by about 700 or so. That's reduced a bit by imprecision in the electronics and at the edges by the frame, but it's still at least 550 lines. NTSC is about 15% less after deductions. 640x480 should work reasonably well on either. Both are interlaced, though.

A decent ~20" 1920x1080p LCD TV can be had for less than $150, shipping included, though.

Re:

[TheRaven64]

Seriously? Not sure how it works in the US, but in the UK, schools by textbooks, pupils don't, and if the school had to pay $100 for each textbook then they'd blow their entire annual budget on textbooks before they even thought about hiring teachers...

Re:

[Trepidity]

That's true for K-12 education in the U.S. as well, but university students must purchase their own books.

Re:

[TheRaven64]

How is the cost of university textbooks even remotely relevant when discussing a computer aimed at schools?

Re:

[TheRaven64]

Nope. Universities do not teach students, and they do not employ teachers. Universities employ lecturers, who present information to students and place them in an environment where they can learn. The students are supposed to teach themselves. This is the difference between a university and a school. You go to a school to be taught, you go to a university to assisted in learning. Failure to understand this difference is one of the biggest reasons why people drop out of university.

semantic quibbling off the track

[Onymous Coward]

That's a very interesting distinction. Certainly touches on an important difference between university and "lower education".

But this is trying to over-specify "school" and "teach" to suit your purpose. In reality, "school" applies to universities, and "teach" applies to lecturing (and advising).

If your gripe is that "school", as you understood it in the context of the article, means "``lower'' education", then that's the point you should make. And I agree with you there -- investigation turns up evidenc

Re:

[slim]

The Raspberry Pi isn't aimed at university students, it's aimed at schoolchildren. So it follows that when they talk about textbooks, they're referring to school textbooks.

Re:

[TheRaven64]

I did make it into university (actually, I had more trouble making it out again - after my PhD and a postdoc, I eventually managed to escape from academia, although they occasionally persuade me to return for a bit), but in school, including A-Level, all of my textbooks were provided by the school. Most textbooks for this age range were under £10. I still have a few of my textbooks (the school sold old ones off sometimes, or gave them away if they were switching to a new textbook the following year)

Re:

[slim]

Are we getting confused here between undergraduate textbooks and the kind of textbooks used by, say, 12 year olds?

I'm seeing the RP as something to be used by under-16s to get their introduction to software tinkering -- just as so many of us did with our 8 bit home computers.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[BasilBrush]

I'm seeing the RP as something to be used by under-16s to get their introduction to software tinkering -- just as so many of us did with our 8 bit home computers.

That is indeed their stated aim. But in that case, I'd suggest a PC is the wrong choice. The magic of the 8-bit computers was that they were simple enough to feel like you could get complete mastery of them. You could start with the simple build in BASIC language, and if you want to put something on the screen, you could just PRINT or POKE. No vast and complex APIs to master. No creating a window, no getting a device context, no requirement for a draw function that will be called by the system, no component

Re:

[jimicus]

?!

The Raspberry Pi device is a SoC-based computer. It's an ARM chip from Broadcom and it runs Linux. So it'd be dead easy to start people off with Python or Ruby.

Re:

[BasilBrush]

I partially take that back. Having now watched the embedded video, I see that it IS an ARM based device, and they considered and rejected the AVR as not powerful enough. But still, I think it's a mistake to have Linux as an OS. It's way more complex than the old 8-bit computer paradigm.

Re:

[julesh]

But still, I think it's a mistake to have Linux as an OS. It's way more complex than the old 8-bit computer paradigm.

Yes, and no. The problem is that the old 8-bit paradigm doesn't really stretch to modern applications. There's no point doing this if the device isn't powerful enough to do things that the students will find useful. And these days, in order for it to be useful, it really needs:

* Internet access
* High resolution display
* Ability to run familiar applications (e.g. a web browser, office package, etc.).

The hope is to get the students to *use* the device first, then persuade them to tinker with it.

For our gen

Re:

[martyros]

The magic of the 8-bit computers was that they were simple enough to feel like you could get complete mastery of them. You could start with the simple build in BASIC language, and if you want to put something on the screen, you could just PRINT or POKE.

I'd say it was also that there was an easily available language built-in, that you could just use.

Actually, I think that javascript could be the language kids these days grow up with. Every web browser has an interpreter, and it's fairly straightforward to

Re:

[Hatta]

12 year olds don't buy their textbooks. They're assigned textbooks owned by the school for the year.

Re:

[jellomizer]

I don't think I can get the professors wire bound collection of photocopied articles for $25 let alone a published book.
15 years back or so I was writing a program for a publishing company that calculated how much money the company could make off a book. While I was debugging the application I was trying to see how cheap I could make my average textbook. Hard Cover, Color Diagrams, Paper that won't dissolve on a humid day... I couldn't come up with a pricing model where break even wasn't under $50.00 a b

Re:

[BasilBrush]

The answer to the problem you propose is Kindle (or any other ebook platform).

Re:

[chill]

Here's the problem I have with your story. If the materials are such a big part of the cost, why does the $120 physical textbook have an e-book version that costs me $90? TO RENT! If I want to keep using it after the semester is over, I need to pay another $25.

Re:

[Overzeetop]

Shit, last class I took (3-4 years ago), the text - less than 1.5cm thick, maybe A5 size, few diagrams (though lots of formulas), was $135. The accompanying reference set (A4, probably 5cm over three softcover books) was another $100.

Re:

[asdf7890]

Any chance of a link to where such hardware can be picked up for that sort of price?

Re:In Poland...

[sammyF70]

as it's a UK thing (and the price I've always seen was 25 pounds, not 25 US dollars) the price in Poland should be the same+shipping

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of Beowolf Cluster jokes.

Re:

[julesh]

Yes. Of course. There are no textbooks at this price range.

What [amazon.com] could [amazon.com] they [amazon.com] have [amazon.com] been [amazon.com] thinking? [amazon.com]