Here comes a thumb-sized PC for $23

LONDON, UK: David Braben, the UK-based game developer, has created a pocket PC named Raspberry Pi for around US$25, for a fully-configured system.

The Raspberry Pi is designed to plug into a TV or be combined with a touch screen for a low-cost tablet.

The device is about the size of a typical USB stick with its USB port on one side and HDMI port on the other, both these ports allow user to connect a keyboard and monitor, which can function as a real PC, reports Mashable.com.

The new device enable you to browse the web at a reasonable speeds and do basic PC tasks such as  word processing. It also features a 12-megapixel camera for videoconferencing, photo taking and video recording. For storage it has an SD card slot and you can install open-source operating system like Ubuntu.

“'Children will be able to use the device as a computer to learn program, to be able to run Twitter, Facebook, whatever, but also to be able to understand the whole process of programming. A lot of things have been obfuscated these days in the sense that you can’t get at them,” Braben said.

“There’s so much between you and doing something interesting or creative that it gets in the way. And hopefully this device will be one of the pieces that helps change that,” he added.

While this Raspberry Pi is not quite fully baked yet, he said that they hope something will be rolled out in 12 months.

Braben  has launched a UK-based charity called Raspberry Pi Foundation for continued support of the device and its goals.

Features of Raspberry Pi

700MHz ARM11

128MB of SDRAM

OpenGL ES 2.0

1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode

Composite and HDMI video output

USB 2.0

SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot

General-purpose I/O

Open software (Ubuntu, Iceweasel, KOffice, Python)