14 DAY TRIAL // There have been many announcements dealing with laptops or mini desktops
that claimed to strike a new compactness record, but there is no doubt that all of their bluster has been blasted into dust by the small device that David Braben came up with.
Products aimed at students aren't an oddity at all on today's market, but the flash drive that is not a flash drive probably tops all standards.
By flash drive that is not a flash drive we mean a small USB stick that, in all reality, is a full-fledged PC.
Game developer David Braben is the mastermind behind the existence of a very small, very low cost, very convenient and very unique invention.
One might mistake it for a regular USB stick at first glance, until the HDMI port comes into view.
Basically, Braben took an ARM11 central processing unit with a clock speed of 700 MHz and, along with 128 MB of RAM (random access memory) and an SD card slot (for storage), packed it all in a tiny package.
The HDMI port serves to connect to any monitor or HDTV equipped with this interface, while the USB connector is mostly used to plug in a keyboard.
No doubt skeptics will wonder just what this small creature will do in terms of application support. Amazingly enough, 1,080p (Full HD) video output is supported (OpenGL ES 2.0 compliance is present). This also means that web browsing, office applications and other tasks will be no real problem.
Even more interestingly, modules can, apparently, be attached to the object, allowing for such things as cameras to be connected.
This number of features in such a small package is already noteworthy in itself, but the deal becomes even sweeter when one realizes that it all comes for just $25.
What's more, Braben would like to see it distributed for free and for courses to be built around their use, so that schools may have a means to easily impart computer know-how to the masses.
Loaded with a version of the Linux OS, the gadget will be distributed through the Raspberry Pi Foundation.