Raspberry Pi Arrives, With a School Debut In Leeds

hypnosec writes "It seems fitting that the first batch of Raspberry Pi computers landed in the UK in the hands of school children based in Leeds as what many consider as another wave of grass-root computing revolution, another BBC Micro 2.0, begins. The Raspberry Pi has been designed from scratch to get anyone interested in computer programming to do so without forking out much; the base unit can connect to a television like the Commodore C64 or the Sinclair ZX81. According to the BBC, the first batch has been presented [Friday] by Eben Upton, the school project coordinator, in an event held at the Leeds offices of Premier Farnell, one of the official PI distributors."

Re:At the price.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ordering now means you'll probably get yours at the end of summer. You'll have to wait longer still if you want several, because right now orders are limited to one per person. If you just want to get experience working with clusters, create a couple of VMs and a virtual network. If you want to cluster Pis to get more performance, get a real computer: cheaper and faster (and available).

Re:Actual cost?

[drosboro]

For this model (the Model B, with Ethernet), the target price is $35. The actual price, including shipping & handling, depends a bit on where you are in the world, but it's pretty much bang on $35 plus whatever shipping charge Premier Farnell or RS has come up with for your country. They've done an amazing job at keeping this thing on track, despite delays and major changes in manufacturing plans...

Re:The First Hurdle

[Techmeology]

You're absolutely right! The Raspberry Pi foundation is interested in a lot more than simply making a (very cool) machine available. The general thought is that a lot of parents are anxious about the notion of allowing their children to experiment on an expensive home PC (being able to experiment with root access, while not mandatory to learn to program, is useful to get to understand how the computer works) - that's part of the reason why the foundation developed the computer. The foundation is also working to create a library of educational materials that are intended to help children learn to program and find out about their machine, as well as promote and encourage changes to the teaching of IT/Computing/Computer Science.

Re:no

[horza]

That's an interesting rewrite of history. The BBC Microcomputer revolution was about entrepeneurs Chris Curry and Herman Hauser bidding against other rivals (Sinclair, Newbury, Dragon) to produce a computer under contract for the BBC. Acorn was already selling the Acorn Atom commercially and the BBC Micro was an upgrade to this. There was no liasing en masse with schools. The academics, inc Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber, were working for Acorn not acting out of charity.

The sad thing is you don't recognise the 6502 had nothing to do with British engineering, yet the ARM chip 100% is. This is very much the BBC micro revolution Mark 2, minus the OS.

Phillip.

Re:no

[CnlPepper]

Re item 1) the tax is on individual components in the EU, but apparently excludes assembled PCBs. Hence (ignore also higher labour rates etc) it is more expensive to assemble the RPIs in the EU then get them made in china and shipped back. They spelled this out clearly on the blog. Its a stupid situation and one they have taken up with the UK minister for business.

Re:At the price.

[gbjbaanb]

who said he wanted performance. He said he wanted fun, which you obviously have no sense of. Good day sir!