Britain's $25 computer is coming by Christmas
Earlier this year British games pioneer David Braben surprised many people with the first appearance of the Raspberry Pi, a low-cost, open source computer aimed at children that he was helping to develop. — Now, six months on from that initial blitz …
Context & Ripple Effects
Six months after David Braben — the Elite co-developer who runs Frontier Developments — showed off a $25 USB stick-sized PC, the project now has a name and a date: the Raspberry Pi, an open-source Linux machine aimed at children, is slated to be available by Christmas 2011.
The arc here is prototype-to-product at speed: what began as a games-industry veteran's side project to put cheap programmable hardware in kids' hands is entering the market within roughly half a year of its first appearance, with the $25 price point intact.
First-order effects
- Children, hobbyists and educators gain access to a $25 open-source Linux computer by Christmas, making a full programmable PC cheaper than most peripherals.
- Braben and Frontier Developments get a second wave of attention for the Raspberry Pi, converting the May 2011 reveal into a shippable product with an identifiable brand.
Second-order effects
- A $25 general-purpose computer pressures established low-end PC and educational-hardware vendors to justify their price floors against a device priced like a textbook.
- Open-source hardware gains a visible champion from outside the traditional maker community, giving other developers a template for celebrity-led, low-cost hardware projects.
Third-order effects
- If the Raspberry Pi ships at scale, it points toward computing literacy programs built around disposable-price hardware rather than school-owned desktop fleets, shifting where children first learn to program.
- Ultra-cheap ARM-based boards could become a default platform for hobbyist and embedded projects, seeding an ecosystem of add-ons and software built by users rather than the vendor.
The trend: Sub-$50 open-source computers are moving from novelty prototypes to shipping products, with education and programming literacy as their wedge into the market.