The computer business never stops still, and this goes for the hobbyist end of the market as much as anywhere else. The Raspberry Pi, for instance, has proved to be a real revolution in the home computing enthusiast world, especially since it’s encouraged so many exciting spin-offs to hit the shelves. The latest is the Kano, a DIY computer in a box.
The latest version of the product has just had an upgrade, and now incorporates the Raspberry Pi 2, a 900MHz, quad core processor with 1GB of RAM. It’s not going to muscle rock your ultra high resolution gaming world, but it’s definitely good enough for your day to day hobbyist and prosumer needs. Especially at the price.
The Kano kit comes with a Pi, speaker, manuals and a fancy little orange keyboard with trackpad. You’ll still have to provide your own screen, but the cables, WiFi dongle and operating system on an SD card are all in the box ready to go. In this respect it makes the Pi a real option for those who want to start computing as fast as possible, without having to spend hours hunting for essential accessories on eBay.
Of course the main use of the kit is to help educate our young feathered friends about computing in general, and probably programming specifically. So the tools and documentation are heavily skewed in that direction. Which doesn’t mean there’s no fun. The kit retails for $149.99 USD or £119.99 depending on your location.
