Announcing Raspberry Pi 2
When the original Rasberry Pi was released back in 2012, the budget, no-frills computer that appeared to fit in an Altoid container was intended to be used by students all over the world to learn programming. It was an instant hit with all age groups.
From a CNN review: “In a world where computers are increasingly powerful...the Raspberry Pi offers surprising proof for the virtue of moderation.” Many others were similarly enthralled. Engadget wrote, “The night it became available to order, both Premier Farnell/element14 and RS Components, the official distributors of the Pi project, exhibited the signs of a late '90s Slashdot effect: you could barely even get the two sites to load.”
The next-generation Raspberry Pi 2 is now available, and when the big announcement was recently made, the website buckled once again. There were over one million more requests than it usually handles, according to the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Raspberry Pi Founder and CEO Eben Upton posted:
Let’s get the good stuff out of the way above the fold. Raspberry Pi 2 is now on sale for $35 (the same price as the existing Model B+), featuring:
- A 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU (~6x performance)
- 1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM (2x memory)
- Complete compatibility with Raspberry Pi 1
Because it has an ARMv7 processor, it can run the full range of ARM GNU/Linux distributions, including Snappy Ubuntu Core, as well as Microsoft Windows 10.”
In a Make magazine feature interview, Upton answers further questions about “a new generation of Raspberry Pi.”
What can you make with a Rasberry Pi? The small computer is popular with the Maker Movement, which focuses on do-it-yourself and do-it-with-others projects completed with inexpensive materials that sometimes involve computers and robotics. The Raspberry Pi website has plenty of plans as well—how about a Hamster Party Cam? Or, you could try just making a case because, although it looks like it could, the Rasberry Pi really won’t fit into an Altoid tin.
