Remember that $25 USB sized computer we reported on a while ago? Well, I got in touch with the charity responsible for it and got an update as to how things are going. Thankfully, (for me at least), they haven’t died or disappeared, following the fate of countless other ventures of this kind. They are actually waiting for their first batch of alpha boards (pre-production devices) to return from manufacture in Singapore, and are also working on reducing the size of this device.
The Raspberry Pi foundation are currently still tinkering away with their Raspberry Pi computer, working on reducing the cost and size of these devices as well as reducing the amount of layers on the PCB board. The alpha boards that are currently being manufactured are electrically identical to that of the boards they are currently tinkering with. This means that the Raspberry Pi foundation will effectively be able to go into production when the alpha boards come back and are approved.
The first of the units should hopefully be able to be passed on to the ‘public beta’ customers in the fourth quarter of 2011. These units will ship with a standard ARM Linux distribution which will most likely be Fedora or Ubuntu. We look forward to the release of this device and will keep you updated as to the progress of it.