The idea is a brainchild of David Braben, for those geeks over 35 he has god-like status being the creator of Elite - a computer game for various 8-bit machines that destroyed gamer's lives way before Doom and Modern Warfare.  His genius was cramming an emersive, never-ending game into 48K of memory.  Yes, 48 thousands bytes.  To put that in context, the HTML for this page is about 30K.

Anyway him and some colleagues have designed, tested and now started manufaturing the Raspberry Pi.  It's essentially a circuit board running the essential components required for a desktop pc - CPU, Video card, Network, Sound, Memory and USB all on something which is about the size of a packet of cigarettes.  All you need is a monitor/TV and a USB keyboard, and you are off.  The device comes installed with a Linux operating system and has an option of a network port, so you can connect to the internet.

Nothing is new about the device in the sense that the components are all used in common devices - mobile phones, cameras etc - but the idea of putting them all together in such a compact form is where the genius is, avoiding the usual issues of reliablility and heat.  It's most likely market is developing countries and the 'homebrew' market, but we love it here and can't wait to get hold of one.

It's the exact opposite of an iPad - iPad's are sexy, but you can get 33.33333333333333 Pi devices for the cost of one iPad.