Reply With QuoteI have absolutely no idea what I'd do with such I thing.
I'm equally sure I'll order a couple, cuz why the hell not? I'll figure out *something* to do with 'em.
The guy who developed Elite (and Kinectimals) has made a fully function PC that fits in a usb stick for £15/$25.
http://www.geek.com/articles/games/g...or-25-2011055/
You need a keyboard and monitor, but most TVs have a monitor input and a keyboard can be had for a tenner, then you plug in this thing and you get a working PC, outputting at 1080p running a Linux distro.
He made it because he had problems with the way computers are taught in schools. That they teach a lot of functional abilities, how to type, make powerpoints and that kind of thing, but very little of their inner workings or the science of computers. He figures this will allow for that, as any and every kid in the world could be given a computer like this to mess around with.
The future, it is here.
I have absolutely no idea what I'd do with such I thing.
I'm equally sure I'll order a couple, cuz why the hell not? I'll figure out *something* to do with 'em.
That's interesting but the need for a TV makes it a bit expensive. Are you going to hand out TVs to all those kids too?
I don't really see much of a market for this thing. Households that have TVs can probably afford a sub $300 netbook.
I want one just because the idea of a fully functional USB stick sized PC is awesome.
Originally Posted by Mark Asher
I think you have quite an optimistic view of a lot of shitty households. The kinds with the parents living off welfare, and have bought semi-expensive TVs to watch their soaps and football, but wouldn't give a fuck about getting their kids a computer. The same kinds of households where the parents will send their kids to school regularly so they get time off from "the little shits" and will then spend their night berating the kids for asking questions about homework while they drink their cheapo cider.
I have no doubt these kids could have access to an XBox or Playstation, but a computer they can experiment with? A totally alien notion.
This will allow a school to literally hand out a computer, and maybe a ten euro keyboard, and the kids who have access to their parents luxuries for a few hours a day get access to a real computer they can play with.
I don't know what it's like on your end of the time-space continuum, but here in the early 21st century, virtually all households own TVs. :-)
But I agree that it seems like a solution to a very specific (possibly non-existent) problem: kids whose families can't afford a (real cheap) PC, but have a TV which can double as a monitor (HDMI output means it needs to be either digital or have a converter), a keyboard & probably mouse, SD cards for storage, etc. Also the stated goal is to teach kids computer science skills, but is giving them a custom piece of HW running a non-mainstream OS the best way to go about it?
Still, it's a pretty nifty piece of microtech, regardless of its usefulness.
The kids too poor to have a TV might still have access to one, being as ubiquitous as they are. Having a keyboard handy to plug in, that might be another matter.
How is this powered?
HDMI carries 9V.
Awesome.
Back the Hell up. David Braben made Kinectimals?!?
700 mhz ARM, 128 MB ram, 25 bucks? That's cheap enough that you could use it like an Arduino, for one off projects that require decent computer power.
A point that was made on another forum is that schools won't need banks of computers to maintain. They can have a room or a library with desks that have a monitor and keyboard on them. Then each pupil can simply come along and plug their personal PC in. It'll save costs for the schools, they won't need someone to maintain a load of computers, someone taking back ups of the computers and repairing them, and each kid will feel like a boss that they get their own computer. I remember hating having to delete all my work on the PCs in primary school (the original 80's Apple Mac.) I'd feel like James Bond if I had one of these.
Having worked with schools, I can say that's a terrible idea Buceph. Kids "lose" books and laptops all the time. Something the size of a USB memory stick will wind up in all sorts of interesting places besides the classroom.
Yeah, but the difference in having a kid lose a $25 computer over losing a $500 laptop is huge, especially when you consider budget approval.
IIUC, this thingie has no onboard storage; you use SD cards for data storage. That being the case, how is that better than just having a bank of cheap PCs in school and giving every kid a flash drive to store their data?
If you're not even going to read the fucking thread, why the fuck should I bother to answer you?
I've been talking to a social worker on another forum, and he thinks it's a great idea. He said they'll often come across kids who have a TV in their bedroom, even an old games console. Purely because the parents see them as a babysitting mechanism. They then head out to the pub to get smashed and leave the kids at home with the TV. He agreed that these parents would never spend money on something like a laptop or netbook, unless the child is particularly persistent, so giving them a USB PC would be great for them.
So I went to see if I should buy one of these things, and apparently they don't really exist, it's just a prototype. I bet they cost more than $25 when they come out, are bigger than they look, and are totally unsuitable for anything.
Did I shit in your oatmeal this morning without realizing it? If so, I apologize; if not - WTF?
IIUC, you're suggesting it would be cheaper for schools to give every student one of these $25 USB PCs to cart back & forth with just keyboards & monitors for them to hook up to, rather than have a traditional computer lab. My question is: is it really? $25 times every student vs, say, $200 (or whatever a cheap edu-desktop goes for) times (some subset of every student); obviously you couldn't afford to buy a desktop for every kid, but I've never seen any school PC lab with a 1-to-1 ratio of `puters to students. Also, tech support - you really think the school can get away with not having someone looking after those monitors, keyboards, printers, and whatever else they may have? Or at least have fewer people responsible for tech support?
Then there are issues like Telefrog points out, i.e., kids lose shit all the time; that's not an issue with desktops in a school lab (presuming they're reasonably securely locked, of course). Basically I'm curious (and a little skeptical) about how this is supposed to work out both logistically and economically from the schools' perspective.
I see a future of daisy-chained addons: A $500 video card, a $100 power supply, SSD accessory, memory add-on modules, illuminated keyboard, DVD burner. Before you know it, that kid will have spent two years of allowances building an eMachine without a case.
Gumstix starts at 120, I think they're lowballing
Ok, so it's powered by the HDMI cable, 9V. You can plug in a keyboard via USB, gotcha. However, to get the thing on the internet, you'd need a powered USB hub, USB wifi adapter (or USB ethernet adapter), and a mouse (not really a requirement, but browsing with a keyboard blows). Not to mention the monitor and an SD card for storage. So, even for $25, you're still looking at costs upward of $150-$200 on top of the thing to get it to do everything you want.
I still love the idea of a PC that fits into a freaking USB stick, though.
I dont think there's a chance in hell they can get this hardware for $25.
When I was a kid I learned to program on a $99 Sinclair ZX80 (that I had to solder together myself) with 1K RAM, connected to a 12" B&W TV and a $10 Radio Shack cassette deck.
A 700MHz PC on a USB stick with HDMI output?? Luxury!
Oh, and my dad used to slice us in two with a breadknife and sing hallelujah before we went to bed in a cardboard box in the middle of the road. You try to tell kids that today, and they won't believe you.
1K of ram? Luxury! My Super Elf had 256 bytes. When hooked to a TV via a RF modulator, the top of the screen was a apparently random hash of white and black dots... that was the machine code for the program that was currently running.
You had a TV!? Luxury! In MY days we had to program with punch cards and get the output from teletype printers... okay, actually that was before my days. :)
I've done many years of computer support for schools and I can tell you that even with good funding keeping a computer lab in working order is hell. With poor or no funding (like my previous job) it is a total nightmare. I would welcome these things in a heartbeat. Though they need some kind of network capability for printing imo.
I really did in high school. Except for the teletype. We had to transmit the program through a card reader hooked up to a 110 baud modem on an acoustic coupler to a central computer at the board of education's data processing centre. The printouts would be delivered next day to the school from the data centre by delivery truck.
I'm not sure if these things will achieve the wonderful stuff Braben is envisioning, but kudos to him for having the desire to achieve positive change, and for reasons that have nothing to do with practicality, I want one of these right now. Hell, I want ten.
I guess if they can get them out for the price they are aiming at, or around that price, they could become part of educational budgets? As in i've seen some schools pay to give fancy phone/pda things to their pupils, so this should widen the amount of schools that can jump on board with it.
Imagine your Computer Science class where your teacher gives one of these out to each student, and you learn to do stuff with it in the lesson etc. I can see lots of educational prospects for such a device.....more so than the old BBC micro(which cost an arm and a leg!) that revolutionised computer teaching in schools in the uk back in the 80's. Well done David Braben.
And sorry for the other thread i started on this, i completely missed this thread title in relation to it!
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