Raspberry Pi micro PC goes on sale today

Hey, you! Yes, you! Do you want a PC that's capable of outputting Blu-ray quality video to your TV, that can fit in the palm of your hand and only costs a shade over 20 quid? Today's your lucky day, as the Raspberry Pi micro PC goes on sale today.

It's currently pretty tough to actually buy one; at the time of writing, Raspberry Pi and the component manufacturer that's selling the unit -- RS Components -- are both the top trending topics on Twitter, resulting in both their websites running very slowly. If you want to grab one, head to RS Components, search for Raspberry Pi and register your interest now for when the sale opens properly later today.

What you'll be buying is the Raspberry Pi model B. It comes with two USB 2.0 ports, 256MB RAM, an Ethernet port and an HDMI out socket, and will set you back a mere £21.60. It's running on a 700MHz processor, so don't expect it to encode your video or run Crysis 2, but it will cope with tasks like word processing and has enough juice to output Full HD video to your TV via the HDMI port.

The Pi, which isn't much bigger than a credit card and doesn't come with a case, is designed as a charitable pursuit by the Raspberry Pi foundation. It hopes the low price and ability to develop both the Linux software and the hardware will see the Pi become an educational tool to get kids interested in computer science again.

Pi founder Eben Upton noticed a severe lack of young people applying to study computing in university and concluded that part of the reason is that computers and games consoles today are often extremely expensive, and are locked down to prevent people from tinkering.

With such a low price, schools could afford to buy numerous Pis and let kids go wild with their soldering irons.

If you fancy a play with a Pi, head on over to the RS Components site now, or to find out more, go to the Raspberry Pi official website -- or watch Luke's video below.