Are you sick of me yelling at the computer yet?
Let me know if you are and I will see if I can change my tone….
Ok, with that disclaimer out of the way, here we go…………..
Who makes a computer these days and decides to not include any connectivity?
I could understand it if it was a big computer, but things are just getting smaller and cheaper.
The IoT market is booming. Connecting things (usually small and cheap) to the Internet is the next (current) wave of doing things.
What tiny handful of functions could you do with a small computer that runs Linux, but has zero network options?
What massive opportunity awaits a small computer that runs Linux and has Wifi or Bluetooth?
If you have not been living under a rock, you would have heard about the Raspberry Pi computer.
Its been out for a few years, it comes in three (four if you count their odd ‘rack’ mount) versions.
To say it has been hugely popular is a massive understatement. They have sold millions of the things.
Well, 3 days ago, they introduced a new version.
They are calling it the Raspberry Pi Zero.
Zero is for zero connectivity.
Sure, it costs 5 bucks, that’s kinda cute and besides the point since you will not be able to buy it for that much (its been years since the first Pis were released and you still can not buy them for their released price due to their popularity), but it is going to cost a lot more, and take up a lot more space because of the adapters you need to buy and use to get it connected.
So, 5 bucks for a computer that runs Linux, but that you can not connect to any network.
It shocks me to the core. That a computer company would deliberately chose to make a computer that has zero connectivity from stock.
All that experience, all that background, all that buying power, all the photos and blog posts of people putting Wifi dongles on your past computers to get them connected to the real world… All that and for your next computer you do not include an Ethernet port, you do not include Wifi and you do not include Bluethooth (low energy).
I have never seen such a spectacular new computer fail as the Raspberry Pi foundation.
They fought hard, they waged a war, the toiled long into the night, but at last, after months and months of hard work, they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and launched the Raspberry Pi Zero.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero/
