Is the Raspberry Pi real at that price? - Page 4

The stuff I'm working on now is still digital in an analog (audio) world but
much higher end.  I've just started on an amplifier with two of the largest
SHARCs we could hook. ;-)



Wouldn't bother me a bit.  I'm rooting for them.  ;-)



Ours was three years late (I got there at the end) on a one year schedule,
so...  I could have saved them at *least* two years of that, including one to
try it their way, and fail.  ;-)



900MHz was really need for the domes and a few places where 2.4G is hugely
overcrowded (and where the powersthatbe are afraid of 2.4G).  It has too many
other problems for general use.  2.4G is far superior for 95% of the
installations.

Software,


I am prepared to wait and see. I confess that I had previously thought
the under a tenner STM32F4DISCOVERY development board complete with a
few LEDs and built in accelerometers was ideal fodder for school labs.

http://docs-europe.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/1002/0900766b8100281f.pdf

That is a lot for the money and somewhat more geared to tinkering.
Although again you could criticise the brochure/datasheet. It is also on
back order for mid-March so maybe on the same container shipment.

However, it does show that kit is on offer in this price range.



Weren't you a IBMer? Their salesmen only ever did FUD.

Until I see one in the flesh I would prefer not to comment. My initial
understanding is that it is not entirely closed and it has been designed
to make it attractive to youngsters. Time will tell how good a job
Raspberry Pi have done on this. I have to say their Charity returns
suggest that like all UK stuff this has been done on a shoe string
budget by the main players calling in favours from everywhere.

http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/CharityWithoutPartB.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber11%29409&SubsidiaryNumber=0

They are certainly not living high on the hog with an annual income of
only £165 in 2010.



We will just have to wait and see. I hope they have got it right
according to their aims to make computing interesting as a subject in
schools.


I think that is unfair. Broadcom have almost certainly put up the money
to make this thing possible both in terms of fabrication and manufacture
with a target market of education. I think it is worth a try. Chemistry
and physics have been completely emasculated in schools with no
"interesting" experiments permitted any more by the draconian health and
safety culture and legions of no-win no-fee lawyers.


No. These are the good guys responsible for verifiable hardware silicon
compiler technologies and some other *very* good stuff. Braben & Bell
wrote Elite which included some cunning hidden line removal tricks so
that flight simulator guys Evans & Sutherland met them on a UK visit.

The pedigree of the two guys that I have previously known suggests to me
that this thing might be very good for teaching in schools and to get
kids making programs for themselves at home. Depends really how easy
they have made it to do sprites and other game components.

The world at the moment is crazy. We should have the latest toolsets
with full static testing and dataflow analysis used for teaching so that
the next generation learn good habits. Instead the appropriate
technologies for static error detection are only available to major
corporate players at vastly inflated prices and ignored by engineers who
have already picked up too many bad habits to use them :(

One of my planned uses of the Pi (once I finally get one) is to play
Oolite on a big TV (for those that don't know, Oolite is the modern
descendant of Elite, which was developed for the original BBC computers).

I don't know how much the Pi will be useful for teaching kids
programming or other computing, but I think that even if you use it for
games or a media player, it will still raise an awareness that the world
of computing is not limited to PC's and windows.  I don't see it
inspiring millions of kids to program - but if it inspires some to look
at what's inside a computer, and what is needed to put one together,
then that's good.

Nowadays a lot of games use scripting. My 10 year old son is already
working on scripts written in Lua to program some intelligence in
items he created in an online game where you can build your own
virtual world.

I don't know what to think of it but I guess its better than just
watching TV.

Absolutely.

Lua is a good language to build into embedded systems too - I'm looking
at this for a new project I'm working on: <http://www.eluaproject.net/

That is a very interesting link! Now that is something which has a
potential educational value.

I hope I didn't accidentally write something helpful and informative
here.  Maybe I should add a gratuitous insult to fit in with the spirit
of the rest of the thread. :-)

Umm... haven't tablet PCs (ARM-based Androids and iPads) largely already
done this?

I mean, I *think* even the most non-technically-savvy kid today knows
that "Android is not the iPad OS is not Windows is not the Mac OS?" :-)

I wish someone would do a "NetBook" in the tablet form factor.  I'd love to
have something like a GalaxyTab to carry around but I can't use an(other)
Android gizmo.

snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz says...


Nearest thing I have seen to that is the ASUS Transformer quite nice.

Over a grand, I think, too.  I don't want to replace the laptop, just augment
it.

snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz says...


Including taxes over here UK got for 450 pounds and conversion rate is
not $2 to 1 pound. The extra keyboard/trackpad section has additional
batteries.

From what I see, the "Transformer" line is around $500-$600 but they're
Android.  That's what I don't want.  The "Slate" is around $1300, which is
what I pay for reasonably high-end laptops.  Lenovo has one of their
convertibles (laptop w/keyboard or tablet) for about the same price, or even a
little less.

Mmm... maybe the Sony slider, soon-to-be released? -->
http://www.tabletpcreview.com/default.asp?newsID29%64&news=tablets+ces+sony+vaio+razer+project+fiona+olpc

Of course, Sony has never been exactly cheap either...

Actually, Sony has been "cheap" in many ways.  ;-)  

Sony is on my DO NOT CONSIDER list.


Back to the point, though, if they can do a $400 X86 NetBook, why not a $400
X86 Tablet?

On, only for the past 2-3 decades now. :-)



My only guess is that their marketing research indicates they wouldn't
be able to sell enough to get the price that low?  Windows 7 is a bit
klunky on tablets anyway; only Windows 8 is released later this year,
though (that purportedly is highly "tablet friendly"), I'd expect that
we will be seeing some inexpensive Win tablets.

I think your last point nails it.  Perhaps an x86 tablet is less than useful,
without a real keyboard[*].  That's why the x86 "tablets" are "convertibles"
with the display folding back over the keyboard.

[*] Spilled a cup of coffee in this keyboard last night and a few of the keys
are less than real.  :-(  At least the laptop powered back on this morning.

sony is just about to bring out a tablet with windows 8 on it.

I wonder if Windows 8 for ARM is the same as Windows 8 for X86 or just
a rebadged Windows CE like WP7.