Raspberry Pi

A large precentage of the population of the devolped world has a laptop, desktop, or other sort of personal computer. Most schools also provide them to students. But what if you want a cheap but powerful and small computer that you can do anything with? Read more to find out.


Desktops are large, stationary, but can be mind-blowingly powerful. Laptops on the other hand, are much smaller and portable,  while also offering some decent processing power. Those computers can cost a small fortune, ranging anywhere for well over $2000 USD for a custom desktop, to as low as $150 USD for a low end laptop. However, there is a computer that changes all of that.

Enter, the Raspberry Pi. A $30 USD personal computer that is almost as powerful as a laptop. The Pi (available here) doesn't have an operating system installed, so that is up to the user to do. With 1 gigabyte of ram, it is actually pretty capable for its small size and price. It has an HDMI port, 4 usb ports, an auxiliary audio jack, ethernet, and a few other connections as well. It uses a Micro USB port for power, so the user can connect any compatible phone charger to supply it.

When installing the OS, most portable distributions of Linux can work. Most of the supported operating systems are based on Debian and must be flashed onto an SD card before they can be used. The Linux base of the system allows the user to do whatever they want and modify the OS to suit their needs. If the operating system is broken, simply delete it and install a new one.

So what do you think? The Raspberry Pi is a pretty neat little computer and is a really interesting learning tool. Post your thoughts in the comments below and be sure to follow to stay up to date on the latest science and technology news.