Today the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a new product. This is a computer built into a keyboard, which is a lot like my old BBC Micro and Amigas, but somewhat more powerful. It appears to use a new board in order to get all the connectors lines up along the back.
It is clocked a bit faster than the standard Pi 4 at 1.8GHz and has 4GB of RAM, which may be enough for a lot of uses. A kit with power supply, mouse, SD card and HDMI cable is under £100.
I have not used a Pi 4 yet, but I understand they can handle a lot of basic web tasks. You can even run two screens from one of these and you have access to lots of Linux apps.
For comparison, my BBC Model A in about 1981 had 16kB of memory and a 1MHz processor. It cost about £300, which might be equivalent to over £1000 today. I had a lot of fun with it.
I know a lot of people will say they need something more powerful, but lots of people do not have a computer at home. They may just use their phone for any online activity. That has limited options for experimenting with things like programming. I learnt to program on my 'Beeb'. The Pi was intended to get kids programming, but took off more amongst hobbyists than schools. I would hope a lot of kids with a limited budget will get one of these to plug into their TV and start learning. The way things are going they may be doing more learning from home and having the tools to do that is essential.
Who is going to buy one?
