Today I would like to talk about the Raspberry Pi! I just got mine a few days ago and I can already say that it is a blast! I'm not going to talk about what I have done with it today, but rather I am going to introduce it! I'm going to be using it a lot in the future so it will help me to let you know what its all about!
The Raspberry Pi is an all in one computer, on a single board. Rather than the multiple separate sections you would find in a normal computer, the Pi has a set on singular chips that are tightly packed together on one board.
On the left we can see another smaller Heat Sink! This is the interface for all the ports on the left hand side. So you can have mutliple USB ports and an ethernet port even on this tiny board! Space for a keyboard and mouse, as well as a wifi dongle or even a USB drive to store extra data! There is also a HDMI port, composite video port and ZIF sockets for both the PI Camera module and an LCD Display! Finally in the top right hand corner we have a mini USB port for power!
So what are the specs of this mini machine then? Well it has a Gigabyte of RAM, making it much quicker than the original version. The CPU GPU combo can clock at speeds of up to 900 Mega Hertz, now this is nowhere near as fast as your average desktop PC. But seeing as you could have around 40 of these on your average desk, that's pretty good going! The Pi also supports many different Operating Systems, I currently have Raspbian installed. This is a modified version of Debian specifically optimized for the Raspberry Pi. It comes complete with a GUI, that looks a bit like windows!
All this on something smaller than an Iphone 4S, means that this is one fantastic mini machine. It boots super quickly and will run many basic programs including Microsoft Word. All this for around £30, its a fantastic bargain and definitely one that anyone like myself should get their hands on! Among other things it's great for school work, as you can carry it around very easily in your school bag!
Stay tuned everyone, you will be seeing more of this delightful desert in the future!