- Raspberry Pi releases new keyboard PC
- Impressed by 80s Tandy 1000 PC
- Raspberry Pi 500 is lower than $100
The Raspberry Pi is already well-known for pushing the envelope in what makes a tiny and reasonably priced pc. Now the producer is reinventing itself once more with the Raspberry Pi 500, a whole PC fitted right into a keyboard that’s obtainable now for buy. Such an thrilling and new thought proper? It actually is, although it’s not the primary time this idea has been delivered to fruition.
In 1984, 40 years in the past, the Tandy 1000 was launched by Tandy Company and based mostly on IBM’s PCjr, which basically match a lot of the pc elements into the keyboard. The Tandy 1000 was profitable within the shopper electronics market and spawned numerous fashions till its eventual discontinuation in 1993.
It used the then-popular home-computer-style case with the keyboard, motherboard, and disk drives in a single enclosure, which stored the design easy and costs far more reasonably priced for the time. Regardless of this stage of success, there wasn’t a correct follow-up to this specific mannequin of pc, which is a disgrace because it was clearly forward of its time.
In comes the Raspberry Pi 500, which is a whole PC wrapped up in a keyboard with a beginning value of simply $90 (about £70 / AU$141). It appears to take robust inspiration from the Tandy 1000 however upgrades the idea to its most handy and reasonably priced type.
The Raspberry Pi 500 is bringing retro again
It comes with a Quad-core 64-bit ARM processor, 8GB of RAM, two micro-HDMI ports, and three USB ports. For those who don’t have a monitor, there’s a 15.6-inch transportable Raspberry monitor for $100 (about £80 / AU$157).
It’s thrilling to see the Tandy 1000-style tech make a comeback — as mini-PCs have already been making an enormous splash within the business because of their a lot smaller dimension footprint and really cheap pricing. And it feels becoming that it could be underneath the Raspberry model because it’s already well-known for its compact PCs, just like the Raspberry Pi CM5.
And for a value of lower than $100, which is much cheaper than even the finest Chromebooks and finest low-cost laptops available on the market, it’s completely well worth the value of entry. It’s compact type issue and approachable price ticket is right for productiveness work, in addition to college students searching for an reasonably priced machine to get their homework and sophistication tasks executed.
Hopefully, the Raspberry Pi 500 will encourage different producers to place out their very own model of a keyboard pc. My private hope is seeing a retro-themed machine designed after the unique Tandy 1000, as a tribute to the one which began all of it is greater than becoming.
