The folks behind the Raspberry Pi $25 computer say that they could start taking orders by the end of February. This isn’t the first release date we’ve seen — the computers were supposed to be ready to go in December, but that didn’t happen. But not it looks like the first batch of 10,000 should finish production by February 20th.

Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer motherboard with a Broadcom BCM2835 low-power ARM-based processor. It’s designed to be able to run Linux-based software and it’s targeted at hobbyists, educational institutions, or anyone who really likes the idea of a $25 computer.

If you want internet connectivity, you’ll need to buy a slightly pricier $35 version.

While the system is designed primarily as a low power, low cost PC, it can handle 1080p HD video playback and even some 3D gaming. There’s also a project underway to port the popular media center application XBMC to run on the Raspberry Pi hardware.

Broadcom has also released a datasheet (PDF link) for the BCM2835 chip which may make it easier for independent developers to work with the Raspberry Pi — but the chip still uses closed source drivers, so the datasheet will only get you so far.

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11 replies on “Raspberry Pi $25 computer could go on sale this month”

  1. I have an old asus netbook. I wonder if I could replace the insides of that netbook for one of these…

    1.  There are projects at https://www.mini-itx.com where they place itx boards (min, nano and pico size) into ‘computer cases’ like a toy aircraft radio, a toaster, the power unit of a desktop, etc. With a smaller board, it would mean smaller possible ‘cases’.

  3. I think it will be cool to see what kind of ‘cases’ that one could put it in (‘cases’ as in ‘non-traditional containers not normally used for computer cases). 🙂

  4. i could really go for one of these would be nice to dualboot limux and android i might just build one of these into the chasis of an older digital alarm clock. I don’t see those networked streaming devices having much marketability after these hit in huge numbers with the ability to do amazon netflix and just about anything else.

    1.  Is Silverlight and Flash supported? My understanding is that HD H.264 files are decoded on dedicated hardware (ie. GPU). Flash on Linux is pretty bad and VDPAU support is iffy. I haven’t heard much about the progress of Silverlight and the open source Moonlight plugins.

      1.  If it supports Silverlight and Flash with HW acceleration then I’d buy it for sure.

      2. According to the devs and admins at the Raspberry Pi forums, HW acceleration for Flash is likely never going to happen. Software decoding will work but it’ll be very slow. In order to get HW acceleration Raspberry Pi has to pay expensive licensing fees to Adobe which will drive the price of the device too high.

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