WaPo | For $9, you will soon be able to buy an insanely cheap computer the size of a credit card
that runs Linux and comes with a 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, 4 GB
storage, and built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. While that’s enough computing
power to surf the Web, play video games, check e-mail and use word
processing software, the real potential is what DIY innovators, hackers
and inventors will do with this cheap computing platform once they
integrate it into other projects.
The world’s first $9 computer — known
as C.H.I.P. — won’t be available for shipping until early 2016. For
now, it’s still only a Kickstarter project with nearly a month to go –
but the promise and potential of a crazy cheap computer is so alluring
that the Oakland, Calif. company behind the project – Next Thing Co. – has already raised more than $925,000 from more than 18,000 backers in just a few days, easily blowing past the $50,000 they had hoped to raise via Kickstarter.
C.H.I.P. comes from the same innovation oeuvre as the $35 Raspberry Pi — a
credit-card size computer that is cheap, portable, highly programmable
and highly connectable. So if Raspberry Pi has managed to attract a worldwide user community
at a price point of $35, you can just imagine what the lower-cost, more
powerful C.H.I.P. might be able to do once it attracts a critical mass
of users.
