Price wise, yes there are many good-and-bad points.... From my point of view, like the 80's BBC Model B (and Sinclair/Amstrad etc) computer in the UK, a mass "get kids programming" system looks ideal...! The fact that it comes boxless, has GPIO and video and USB, it looks like a nice "platform", but it just depends who "jumps on it!!!" Hopefully a lot of people will learn base Unix *young*...
Lets face it, i'm on a 4core PC now, access to about 20cores in the house, I've a massive video-procesing card, wifi/ethernet, etc, so It's not the technology thats the good thing about the PI, its the Platform that will hopefully take off as a home-devbox!!!
I can currently write whatever I need on a Windows PC (or Atari ST), so the PI will be just another addition to the toolkit, but all my mates' kids *will* all have them at school so we can write stuff betweeen us and they can show it off, just like when I was 8!...! Just the addition of a turtle and lightpen and I am back in 1983! For £30, with an SD slot and VGA connector and chips I think is OK...! My 4GB memory card from "Maplins'" was £6, so about £40 total (plus keyboards I've got 000's!) with postage for the working package I believe is quite fair!!
I want to write an OS from pre-bootloader stages, and this looks like the base for it!! I could just use Unix as the base, but why not create (or finish off) my own "Nesix" with the chance to run on its new PI platform!!!! Originally running on MsAccess2, I've still got a lot of it in use, an ideal forum server!!!
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NEAL