Monday, January 9, 2017

Raspberry Pi Software for PC's

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Raspberry Pi is a tiny low power single board computer that was designed for students to learn to program. All the software is open source allowing full access to all sections of the computer. Originally only a few thousand would be made but the producers under estimated the demand and after two years 10 million had been sold. Raspbian is the official Operating system and this has now been ported to run on a standard Laptop using a Live CD or bootable thumb drive. As this does not interfere or rely on the main Operating system it is quite safe to use and won't compromise the Laptop's warranty. Raspbian comes with an up to date browser and email client, an office suite, photo viewer and media player as well as several installed programming languages. The image file can be found by Googling Raspbian x86 pixel.

Intel Compute card

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Intel are developing a computer in a card which is designed to be slotted into a PC similar to the way a SD memory card is inserted. The card will hold the processor, memory, graphics, audio and solid state disk drive. The connector at the bottom will be similar to the usb-c allowing media for the screen to be delivered and inputs for the keyboard, mouse and USB ports. Upgrading a computer will happen when a more powerful card is inserted. The case, power supply, screen and keyboard will not need to be changed, removing the built in obsolescence that exists at present. The major PC companies will be begrudgingly producing these this year as they fear that if they don't the phone manufacturers will. The cards are optimized for Windows 10, Windows Embedded, Android and Linux. These cards may well end up as the computer for Smart TV's and other devices.