"As a general point of cynicism (and that seems to be my mood today) - did nobody ever have a small, general purpose computer before the Raspberry Pi came along

"As a general point of cynicism (and that seems to be my mood today) - did nobody ever have a small, general purpose computer before the Raspberry Pi came along?" Of course, but the Pi has dropped the price point considerably. The Beagle Board targets a similar market but is several times as expensive: http://beagleboard.org/ http://beagleboard.org/