Earlier this year, we had a project that revolved around the Raspberry Pi / Raspbian platform, which essentially is a low-cost computing architecture, not terribly dissimilar than some of the stuff I saw being engineered for the projects like "one laptop per child".
Of course, when someone first mentioned it, I had not heard of it, and thought they were talking about some kind of edible pie.
Turns out, that these little kits (they tend to be sold as assembly kits) are quite interesting. Sort of like coming back to the old Heathkits; except no soldering is required. Kits tend to come with a mainboard/chip (small form factor), and have pluggable slots for keyboard, HDMI for a screen, 4 USB2.x ports, power, and one ethernet port. At least the one we ordered from Canakit has these, as well as a plastic case that the board can be seated in.
I see there's an entire community around these "disposable computing" devices, ranging from academic projects and use cases to commercial uses.
I should subscribe to some of the periodicals.
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