Each week, we spotlight a cool innovation recommended by some of the industry's top tech writers. This week's pick is a computer the size of a credit card.
The Raspberry Pi 4 is a "computer the size of a credit card" that might be capable of replacing your desktop, said Scott Gilbertson at Wired. It's the fourth iteration of the Raspberry Pi, which was first released in 2012 as a bare circuit board, "intended as one part educational device, one part tinkering tool." But it became a phenomenon "used to power everything from scaled-down Mars rovers" to school science experiments, and spawned countless imitators.
The new Pi 4 is a grown-up version of the "tinkerer's toy." It's three times faster and comes with 4 GB of RAM, four times the memory of previous versions. The Pi 4 is still not in the same league as the latest desktops. But it's priced at just $55, and "if your computing needs are roughly on par with PC processing speeds from around 2012," the Pi 4 might be all you need to ditch the desktop.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
How clean-air efforts may have exacerbated global warmingUnder the Radar Air pollution artificially cooled the Earth, ‘masking’ extent of temperature increase
-
September 14 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include RFK Jr on the hook, the destruction of discourse, and more
-
Air strikes in the Caribbean: Trump’s murky narco-warTalking Point Drug cartels ‘don’t follow Marquess of Queensberry Rules’, but US military air strikes on speedboats rely on strained interpretation of ‘invasion’
