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Raspberry Pi Goes on Sale, Stocks Cleared Out Promptly

By Wong Chung Wee - on 1 Mar 2012, 3:50pm

Raspberry Pi Goes on Sale, Stocks Cleared Out Promptly

The US$35 Raspberry Pi was launched today and was sold out promptly. This single-board computer was developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to encourage the teaching of basic computer science in schools.

Model B (Source: Premier Farnell)

The Raspberry Pi features an ARM-based Broadcom processor with VideoCore IV GPU, and 128 or 256 MBs of RAM. There are two models of the Raspberry Pi; Model A has 128 MB RAM, one USB port and no Ethernet controller, while model B will feature 256MB RAM, two USB ports and a 10/100 Ethernet controller. They do not feature any HDDs or SSDs as they boot up from an SD card. They rely on the same SD card for storage purposes.

The Raspberry Pi supports Linux-kernel based operating system and one of its official online retailers; RS Components Ltd., offers Raspberry Pi with pre-loaded Fedora-based operating system. The other official retailer is Premier Farnell.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation launch Model B first as it appeals to hackers and hobbyists. The Foundation aims to build a strong community of Raspberry Pi users first. Upon gaining traction in this community, Raspberry Pi Foundation will launch Model A that is targeted at schools and education institutions. This is in the interest of students and educators as they will have the communal support from the early adopters of Raspberry Pi. The Foundation also stated that with the launch of Model B, the software written for the device will hopefully be less buggy and more user-friendly for its intended audience.

Source: Premier Farnell, RS Components via Raspberry Pi Foundation

 

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