David Braben designs $25 computer

awesome, I hope my school will get them for the IT departement. we start doing some game developement next year :)

Yeah... because people looking for a $25 computer are going to have displays with HDMI...

COOL, IS LIKE A PENTIUM 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, in a few years, when this product becomes successful enough and threatens the big companies, I'm sure they'll find a way to silence this innovation.

Hey--you could still run the classics. Kids in Nicaragua can study computers and play Doom. 8)

@JGoWild It's not only Third-world children that need this - there are still lots of technology illiterate people in developed countries who could benefit from this.

Techically our smart phones are made of small computer hardware as well. But the difference here is the price and it looks very successful to me.

But can it run crysis?

He should partner with some non profit to bring this marvelous achievement to third world children. In my opinion, they are in desperate need of this. Finally, David Braben, I salute you.

Heh, no surprises there from the maker of Elite, the great grandaddy of space games -- an entire universe in less than 100kb :)

Game Spot UK, they compare it with a 20p Coin (from UK), So why do they state the price of the computer as $25!! For people in the UK the price in £ is £15.

That little black cooling thing... 'What's in the box', anyone ?...

$25??? blimey

Wish I knew how to get a hold of them, I am unemployed and have childcare experience and a degree in computer programming... I would teach kids to code with it. I was writing a letter to my local authority the other day to suggest they run a computer science basics course for kids and offering to run it lol

Unbelievable, in the truest sense of the word.

Cool! I like the idea but I hope they change the name. With a like luck maybe this will be used as training aid for US school children as well. The cost is very low and the unit is very potable maybe this will help children of lower privileged families become more accustom to the technological needs in our work force.

OMG technology is getting more and more advanced!

@Ladiesman17 Yeah the future seams to be going that way, proof of that are the tablets, and the ARM technology, and the "Cloud" concept, my only concern, is the Clouds concept, don't like the idea of all my data being storage "in the clouds", I prefer having all physical, to avoy privacy breaches, like what happen to Sony.

Wow, makes me excited to see what the future holds :)

maybe in the near future PC is more like USB devices just plugged in through every HDTV monitor and connected through Steam-based interface... cheap PC, cheap Games for everyone... then EA and Activision can suck each others foot... yeah... It's just in my dream =/

im only intrested in tec that hovers ,( nearly there )

I like how the black cube looks like it's got all the secrets of the universe.

I would buy it the future of technology sure is coming fast

Dayum, 700mHz. Hope this thing comes with a USB expansion thingy. If we want internet, keyboard, mouse, etc support we'll need more USB. But this is still incredible. Shows how small we can make these.

ahuh... so can i play portal 2 on this or what? :) Impressive miniaturisation right there.

i'm amazed at how small that much power has been packed into, Thats some good stuff right there, it's more powerful than my 1st college computer back in 1999 (AMD K6-III 400Mhz) and looks like it takes up the space of a GBA SP. Progress, and i like it :)

@Jaga_Telesin why? its not designed to be the do all and end all of cheap computing its main purpose is just to have a cheap and easy to run BASIC pc that will get children into the basics of programming

Its a pretty neat idea. Truly mobile computing.

Wow, you can do a lot with 700mhz, but 128MB ram for Ubuntu ? with fluxbox maybe.

700mhz is the CPU speed a Wii has!

I want one.

@ Giga_Surfer I did the same exact thing. My old HP PC had a amd 350mhz processor with 128MB of ram. When I turned off all the shadowing and animations and whatnot in XP it ran smooth with no lag for me. I later doubled the ram to 256MN but it ran XP just fine! It still runs Puppy Linux or DSL Linux today for fun.

better hide this thread from nintendo they are gonna be pissed they took those extra parts they were gonna use to make the second wave of 3ds`s

The idea is pretty cool, let's just hope the implementation of it is as well.

Braben stop being awesome and make Elite IV :P

This is pretty amazing =) the screen would cost more than the computer... i can see the possibility of having "laptops" like this for computing while away, not necessarily with internet access (so no online profile like chrome OS). i'm talking about word processing, etc then, to record your observations on a trip or so. in schools and less developed nations it could be a big step, probably even more importantly.

@Jaga_Telesin You are quite mistaken, this has a really huge practical application, specially in schools, or even just to access the internet, also that 128mb of ram, is just enough to run even windows xp, a few years ago, i out of boredom put together a Celeron with 333 mhz and 128mb of ran, and run win98 smoothly, it even run windows xp, a bit laggy but it run, you don't need a powerful machine to access the internet, even my old cellphone does it, so yeah a 25 dollar super small and super cheap PC, is something very impressive, and with allot of potential.

Novel idea, but practical applications are too small to take it seriously. Try again in about.. 15-20 years.

nice, i'd like to mess around with one of those

Wow. This is a breakthrough in technology with that size and that cost.