Pre-Packaged Pi(e)

This is the Raspberry Pi, a $35 computer roughly the size of a card deck. 

      It was designed to give people (especially children) a cheap, easy way to learn about computers, programming, and basic electronics. More than thirty million have been sold. The Pi runs a little more slowly than most commercial PCs but it does the basic things you want a computer to do and does them in familiar ways.

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     For the past eight years, using a Raspberry Pi has involved buying the Pi and then separately acquiring peripherals like a power source, an HDMI cable, an SD card, an operating system, a mouse, a keyboard, and a monitor. That's more prep than some people are willing to endure. If you're one of those people, meet the Raspberry Pi 400. 

 

     This device embeds a Raspberry Pi right into a keyboard. (This is a throwback to the early days of home computing; anyone else remember the Commodore 64?) It comes in a $100 kit that includes all the peripherals, save the monitor. At that price, one suspects that there will soon be a lot of these in schools...and under Christmas trees.