The £15 computer

Most people who grew up in the 80's will remember the name David Braben, he was the co-developer who created the incredibly popular computer game Elite and has since created Frontier (the followup to Elite), Rollercoaster Tycoon and most recently Kinectimals.

He believes that since the dawn of the new millenium education has been teaching the skills to use programs but without the understanding of the hardware and architecture of the modern computer, or the ability to create them.

His solution to this issue has been to build a new type of low cost PC that can be given away free to kids and have courses built up around their use. Where this becomes ground breaking though is in the PC he has created - rather than go down the route of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) who have managed to produce very low cost laptops that nethertheless follow existing PC architecture, Braben has created a fully functional PC that is about the size of a little finger but with the power to run Linux on a HDMI screen, connect to USB devices and even add modules such as the 12MP camera seen attached in the image above.

The computer is powerfull enough to surf the web, run office applications and even has decent graphic performance and yet is small enough to be attached to a keychain. Want to know the best bit?

It costs just £15, that's RRP of the average book or DVD and less than the cost of a bankers breakfast!

Known as the Raspberry PI, it should be available within the next 12 months and will be distributed through the charitable foundation setup by Braben called the Raspberry Pi Foundation.