I hope they brought some cigarettes...
Cause I like to smoke after I get f*cked with exchange rates..
On a serious note though, looks cool and I'd be very interested if it was < £100..
Educational hardware startup Kano announced on Monday that it had raised $15m from a Series A funding pot. Brit economist and one-time Goldman Sachs asset management chairman Jim O'Neill was among the backers piling greenbacks onto the outfit. Kano, whose computer is powered by the Raspberry Pi 2 and retails at $149 (£119.99 …
Kano is a british company and the exchange rate is almost spot on.
$149 = £98.36 + 20% VAT = £118.03, so if you feel an extra £1.96 is getting f***ed by an exchange rate rather than just rounding up to the nearest 99, I would suggest you have bigger worries.
I had a Radionics set when I was about the same age. I don't remember it being made by Philips, though.
I don't actually know what happened to it. It's probably still buried in a box in my Father's loft. I remember that I used to burn out the transistors, and soon became proficient enough with a soldering iron (while repairing the component blocks) to no longer need the kit! So a double whammy learning experience.
Maybe mine was older. The page here suggests that the kits were not originally made by Philips, but later marketed by Philips. Possibly Philips bought or licensed the design.
IIRC, the box for mine looked very similar to the one in the background of this picture
Packaging and deployment maybe? I agree though that the money is high for this, of course maybe they are seeking Apple fans. Whatever happens with Pi like devices it's going to have to beef it up, because these devices are becoming more desired, but have halted adding many things people want and have halted on "defaults" features that come with even the cheapest of boards. For this asking price, they realky just might have to target unknowing children...Disney style.
A cut-down version of Raspbian? - and yet this "pack" includes a Pi 2, which has more CPU's and more memory than an original Pi, which runs Raspbian pretty well....
I'm sure they must know what they are doing, but why buy their kit, when you can buy the bits separately, and download the software for free? The educational market might be the only way they can shift units at that price, esp if schools get a discount for multiple units?
I'm sure they must know what they are doing, but why buy their kit, when you can buy the bits separately, and download the software for free?
The same question could be applied to almost anything you buy nowadays. Some products, notably perfume, but also coffee, are almost all packaging. And consumers love it.
Providing everything you need at once, including a keyboard and printed manuals reduces the number of decisions to be taken (which case?, which power supply, etc?) and the hurdles involved. Also, for the educational market both sales and after-sales support are likely to be important. Buy enough of them and have them customised: how about the physics department deciding to have the oscilloscope version? or the biology one with the microscope controller?
The Pi isn't the cheapest bit of ARM-hardware out there but it's a known commodity with an expanding software and hardware ecosystem.
I hope most of the cash has gone in to the applications for teaching kids how to code by playing snake, pong, minecraft, a terminal based adventure game, etc. My son (9) played the adventure game last night and now he knows how how to use ls, cat, mv, cp and possibly some more when I wasn't watching. My daughter (12) had a similar experience. He has worked through all the other exercises independently. We've let another 8 kids ranging from 8-13 play on our Kano and it and they've each been able to solve the exercises and experimented.
I've ordered the PowerUp, because I'm hopeful that working with the LED board will extend the kids further. Sure I could put it all together for less, but time is money and the kids have something they can use now, rather than waiting for Dad to have some free time.
It will be interesting to see if the demand is higher than the 500 Kano are planning to build.
I'm pretty sure this is for non-tech or affluent parents and relatives that want to give it as a birthday or Christmas gift.
I wanted to give one to my grandson for his coming birthday, but I know I'll be kicking myself for spending all that money on the "pretty". I might as well get the separate parts for him and buy some other pretty toy with the £60 that I'll save.
"Where's the other £60 going? The cardboard box?"
£20 VAT. £10 power supply (not a £3 Chinese "supply" that fails even a basic safety inspection). A fiver for the SD card and then the cost of programming it. Dongle and cables are likely to be closer to £10 a throw - HDMI cables are not cheap as chip even in the trade and again the dongle is unlikely to be the cheapest tat out there. And yes, packaging, manuals and support.
If you don't want it or can get cheaper then go elsewhere, no one is stuffing it down your throat. But adding up only half the BOM and complaining you only get to half the value is not a valid argument.
Sure you can buy a Pi and all of the bits and save some money.
But the reason why this will be a success is that its all packaged together with less hassles so that the kid can play with it knowing that he's got all of the correct pieces in front of him.
BTW, its still cheaper than a Heathkit H8 and that's straight dollars with no adjustment for inflation. And yes, I'm showing my age. ;-)
...the original Sinclair ZX80 kit......
Yes, you too, can make a computer !! At least these days, it'd be much easier to load and edit programs on the Kano....back then, it was either using a mono portable cassette tape deck (LOADING...>>), or typing in multiple lines of code....
http://www.gondolin.org.uk/hchof/related-images/zx80-2.jpg
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£75 http://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-2-starter-kit
£50 http://thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi-kits-and-bundles/products/raspberry-pi-2-starter-kit
£69 http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/raspberry-pi-board-and-starter-kit-r45pi
£43.99 http://www.modmypi.com/raspberry-pi/set-up-kits/rpi2-model-b-kits/starter-kit-including-new-raspberry-pi-2-model-b
Does make you wonder where all the extra money is going, especially since the Foundation does all the Raspbian dev work, spends a lot of money on education, and supports things like SonicPi, Scratch, Minecraft Pi and Mathmatica, and won't see a penny of this £15M (except the usual cut of the Pi2 sales)