4 ms·

In developed nations, I think families in poverty usually have a TV. The brilliance here is that a kid in a poor family can get started with just a single piece

In developed nations, I think families in poverty usually have a TV. The brilliance here is that a kid in a poor family can get started with just a single piece of hardware that's available cheaply.

chmod775 6y ago
>In developed nations, I think families in poverty usually have a TV. That was a fair assertion 1997. Nowadays you will easily find a bunch of computers too. >The brilliance here is that a kid in a poor family can get started with just a single piece of hardware that's available cheaply. $100 isn't cheap when you're poor. A poor family that has any sense certainly won't buy brand-new hardware. When you have to save money, you buy second-hand, which will allow you to buy a fairly modern PC with a magnitude more power than that raspberry PI at half the price. For instance I could pick this computer up for 1 euro simply because someone wants to get rid of it: https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/pc-computer-acer/1559639278-228-4884 https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/pc-computer-acer... You can find tons of offers like these if you'd browse your local ebay/craigslist/whatever listings. Why would someone spend 100 bucks on a new machine?
- ddingus 6y ago
  Because it comes with community, is relevant, etc... Sure, smarter people can literally dumpster dive and get going. I literally did that as a kid. N9 big deal. Tons of people will buy this and get a lot out of it.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    > I literally did that as a kid. Wicked, would love to hear the story.
    - hexadec 6y ago
      No the parent, but I did this a bunch as we grew up poor. I got an oooooold IBM PS2 notebook with 6 Windows 3.1.2 floppies from the school IT discard pile. My friends and I also created the cheapest PC we could. It was a cardboard box with a small box fan and then all the Pentium 4 guts duct taped inside.
      - ddingus 6y ago
        Awesome sauce. I'm an 80s kid so I basically had two rounds of this. I'll share later. But thanks for getting it started.
      - core-questions 6y ago
        Very nice. I also had a box PC for a while, until my old man made me get rid of it as a fire hazard.
    - ddingus 6y ago
      I have two experiences to share. Watch this space. Maybe writing about good times is good therapy for what is otherwise a painful election...
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  > $100 isn't cheap when you're poor. I meant if they somehow got ahold of one (community program, kind person from across town, local school getting rid of them, etc.). The discussion was more about whether a child in a poor family who gets one can actually use it without any extra hardware, not how affordable $100 is to a family in poverty. Most parents in poverty don't have the brain space to think about buying one of these for their kids, much less the $100 it costs.
  - yodelshady 6y ago
    > Most parents in poverty don't have the brain space to think about buying one of these for their kids. You're absolutely right, and that's why the pi foundation includes schools as a target market. Schools deliver the greatest, and certainly the most equally distributed, value, and cheap computers mean more money to spend on that brain space.
  - thw0rted 6y ago
    Right, the point is not that poor families can afford a $100 computer, rather that the poor family's school can buy more $100 computers to hand out than they can $200 Chromebooks or $400 iPads.
- bluedino 6y ago
  I guess you'd have to define poor. Many low-income families have things that cost $100 or more, like game consoles, tablets, phones...
  - ben_w 6y ago
    Sure, but for a sense of scale about how badly wrong things can go even in “rich” countries like England, 17% of state educated kids get free school meals because food is too expensive: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54692880 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54692880
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      My local rural school, its around 50%

In developed nations, I think families in poverty usually have a TV. The brilliance here is that a kid in a poor family can get started with just a single piece of hardware that's available cheaply.

chmod775 6y ago

>In developed nations, I think families in poverty usually have a TV. That was a fair assertion 1997. Nowadays you will easily find a bunch of computers too. >The brilliance here is that a kid in a poor family can get started with just a single piece of hardware that's available cheaply. $100 isn't cheap when you're poor. A poor family that has any sense certainly won't buy brand-new hardware. When you have to save money, you buy second-hand, which will allow you to buy a fairly modern PC with a magnitude more power than that raspberry PI at half the price. For instance I could pick this computer up for 1 euro simply because someone wants to get rid of it: https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/pc-computer-acer/1559639278-228-4884 https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/pc-computer-acer... You can find tons of offers like these if you'd browse your local ebay/craigslist/whatever listings. Why would someone spend 100 bucks on a new machine?

ddingus 6y ago
Because it comes with community, is relevant, etc... Sure, smarter people can literally dumpster dive and get going. I literally did that as a kid. N9 big deal. Tons of people will buy this and get a lot out of it.
- core-questions 6y ago
  > I literally did that as a kid. Wicked, would love to hear the story.
  - hexadec 6y ago
    No the parent, but I did this a bunch as we grew up poor. I got an oooooold IBM PS2 notebook with 6 Windows 3.1.2 floppies from the school IT discard pile. My friends and I also created the cheapest PC we could. It was a cardboard box with a small box fan and then all the Pentium 4 guts duct taped inside.
    - ddingus 6y ago
      Awesome sauce. I'm an 80s kid so I basically had two rounds of this. I'll share later. But thanks for getting it started.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      Very nice. I also had a box PC for a while, until my old man made me get rid of it as a fire hazard.
  - ddingus 6y ago
    I have two experiences to share. Watch this space. Maybe writing about good times is good therapy for what is otherwise a painful election...
TimTheTinker 6y ago
> $100 isn't cheap when you're poor. I meant if they somehow got ahold of one (community program, kind person from across town, local school getting rid of them, etc.). The discussion was more about whether a child in a poor family who gets one can actually use it without any extra hardware, not how affordable $100 is to a family in poverty. Most parents in poverty don't have the brain space to think about buying one of these for their kids, much less the $100 it costs.
- yodelshady 6y ago
  > Most parents in poverty don't have the brain space to think about buying one of these for their kids. You're absolutely right, and that's why the pi foundation includes schools as a target market. Schools deliver the greatest, and certainly the most equally distributed, value, and cheap computers mean more money to spend on that brain space.
- thw0rted 6y ago
  Right, the point is not that poor families can afford a $100 computer, rather that the poor family's school can buy more $100 computers to hand out than they can $200 Chromebooks or $400 iPads.
bluedino 6y ago
I guess you'd have to define poor. Many low-income families have things that cost $100 or more, like game consoles, tablets, phones...
- ben_w 6y ago
  Sure, but for a sense of scale about how badly wrong things can go even in “rich” countries like England, 17% of state educated kids get free school meals because food is too expensive: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54692880 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54692880
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    My local rural school, its around 50%