The masses seem to be buying into the dream behind the $35 Raspberry Pi, a low-cost, barebones computer designed to get PCs into the hands of kids who want to learn to code. Sunday, the Raspberry Pi foundation announced that the company sold its two-millionth micro-PC sometime towards the end of October.
Even better, the second million moved faster than the first million did after the Pi’s high-profile launch. Here’s what the foundation’s Liz Upton had to say:
“It took us almost exactly a year to sell the first million Raspberry Pis. Going on that basis, we calculated that we might, if we were lucky, reach the second million around January 2014, or slightly afterwards – we were confident we’d get there by the end of February 2014. So it was a bit of a shock at the end of last week when we got the latest sales figures and discovered that the 2,000,000th Raspberry Pi was sold in the last week of October. We don’t know who owns it – if you bought one between October 24 and October 31st, it might be yours.”
The $35 Raspberry Pi model B has 512MB of RAM, two USB ports, composite analog video and audio outputs, an HDMI output, an SD card slot, and 10/100MB ethernet. It’s powered by a 700MHz Broadcom BCM2835 SoC (system on chip) with a VideoCore 4 GPU capable of outputting 1080p video. The circuit board also offers access to the computer’s GPIO (general-purpose input/output) pins and DSI and CSI connectors for direct connection to expansion boards, displays, and more.
The open nature of the Raspberry Pi allures to more than the next generation of computer geniuses, however. Those two million Pis have spawned a legion of crazy awesome hardware hacks, a low-cost camera board accessory, and even a Kickstarter for an affordable, Pi-ready 9-inch display. Heck, you can even play Minecraft on the thing.
Want to see what all the hub-bub is about? Check out our review of the Raspberry Pi for all the info you need to know about this deliciously affordable PC.