[luser001]

This IS today's version of the BBC Micro. AFAIK, the BBC Micro was a cheap design to encourage computer education since regular PCs were very expensive.

I too cut my teeth on a BBC Micro. My school had ~20 of them. If they'd bought PCs, they would have had maybe 5?

The Raspberry Pi will do the same thing today, especially in poor countries which don't have computers as a matter of course in their schools.

You're talking from an overly Western-centric perspective when you say that typing "python" is cheaper than the RPI.

The world has 7 billion people, many of whom live in poor countries. At $35 with the ability to use a regular TV as a console, this thing is well within the reach of poor person even in a poor country like India to buy as a splurge for his kid who he's told my their teacher is bright.

I, for one, think this is going to be revolutionary.

PS: I also plan to use it for some home automation projects. It can run off of batteries (!!!!!), and is a plain old GNU/Linux distro. How cool is that.

[sern]

The BBC Micro was actually quite expensive compared to the other micros of the time. (I don't think the IBM PC was ever considered a "micro", and other micros were probably more capable anyway.) If I remember correctly, the goal was not to produce a design that would compete mostly on cost but rather one that was British and would do the flashy stuff the BBC wanted to show on their computing series.

I agree that the Raspberry Pi will be revolutionary, not because it will rejuvenate computer science teaching, but simply rather because it's a cheap computer.

[luser001]

> I agree that the Raspberry Pi will be revolutionary, not because it will rejuvenate computer science teaching, but simply rather because it's a cheap computer.

Yep. It looks we were mostly in agreement then! :)