The $5 Computer

This year when I got my Raspberry Pi 2, I thought it was the best low cost computer I would ever see. Well, the company that makes the Raspberry Pi just showed me how wrong I could be.

The Cambridge U.K. based Raspberry Pi Foundation just turned a $1 million dollar grant from Google into a $5 dollar computer distribution. The PC board is about as quick as an iPhone 4S and has ports for keyboard, mouse, USB, video, and a Wi-Fi dongle. It runs the free Raspbian Linux distribution. Other Raspberry Pi models also run Ubuntu, Kali and even Windows 10 IoT edition.

This platform has brought the cost of computing down to the point that just about everyone can afford to test and tinker with them. We use our Raspberry Pi 2 for a number of things. Our office PBX is a Raspberry Pi 2 running a Linux based Asterisk distribution. My home Raspberry Pi 2 is currently running the RetroPi project which is a distribution of old video games.

As the world embraces the Internet of Things, the Raspberry Pi platform will have a huge impact. Everything from home automation to holographic jukeboxes and everything in between, the IoT will continue to develop with the help of low price of compute.

Read the full article here: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/11/26/raspberry-pi-rolls-out-5-computer/