I think I'd still go with a Beagleboard Black. The thing you want is documentation and source code. I can't find any on Allwinner's site (and the other component's manufacturers aren't named), and given Allwinner is a Chinese company I wouldn't put a lot of faith in the English documentation. Likewise, the Broadcom SOC in the Raspberry Pi's full documentation is only available under NDA and then only to volume customers, which is BS (moreover, no source for the bare metal stuff--an opaque binary blob does that).

If you're selling something as an educational development platform, some things are a lot more important than a few dollar's savings.

It looks like the Beagleboard Black has similar specs. But it's $55. That's more than a few dollars difference.

I'm thinking if you can get a Linux distro with a GUI, a word program, a MS Paint type program, and support for a USB hub, you can turn it into a full fleged computer experience for $9 (+cost of USB Hub-$7, USB keyboard-$7, & USB mouse-$7). Assuming the user already has a composite capable TV. Oh, and you'd need a video adapter. Haven't priced those yet.

Anything keeping that from happening?

Education for someone in a third world country isn't necessarily re-writing the assembly code. It is just enjoying using the computer. Learning to type. Learning how a mouse works. Making something beautiful. Writing a paper for school. From there, curiosity and fun will do the rest.

Nice idea, but horrible horrible name. "Chip" has meant "integrated circuit" for how many decades now? which chip does Chip use? see the problem? all the kids using this device to learn about computers will start off with incorrect terminology, when discussing with *anyone* who hasn't heard of this device.

"Raspberry Pi" on the other hand - sure it could be a baked food product, but in the context of computers/devices, it's pretty unambiguous.

Yeah, but that isn't the purpose of these. They tried that with OLPC and it was a good design but there were much more helpful ways to spend money to help third world children and it didn't really work out for a variety of reasons. These are, at best like the Raspberry Pi, intended for poor and middle-class western kids, to give them a 'hackable' platform that encouraged learning about how computers work (like the Commodore 64s and BBC Micros of old). Ideally, they would be distributed to public school students. Cheap is important, but not if it means you forgo the 'hackable'-ness.

But also my advice was really more intended for those here, who would be buying something like this to mess around with for DIY stuff.

Anyone remember TI graphing calculators, which at the time I was using them (90s) I think ran on 8088 processors?

Quite a bit MORE expensive than this. MUCH less powerful, even factoring in Moore's law. AND, they were in no way intended to be an open, hackable design like this is. And even with all those limitations, they became one of the primary "introduction to hardware and software hacking" devices of my generation.

When I was a 16-year-old HS Freshman, I had a TI-81 that I hooked up to a PC with a serial port and "hacked" zShell onto. I learned a bit of assembly code and put on lots of little programs like games etc. onto my calculator. I even got an image display program where you could load up bitmap images that were converted to a specific size and color depth (4-8 grays if I remember right). I got busted in my Geometry class that year looking at a blurry grayscale picture of a topless Pamela Anderson. On my calculator. If that doesn't put me in the running for biggest nerd ever, I don't know what would.

Anyway, I can only see this "Chip" thing (I agree that I'm not too big on the name) as a very cool idea. Sometimes, something as simple as a hackable platform or a blurry 4-bit picture of some boobs can be enough to push someone towards a lifelong interest in IT and other technology. Raspberry Pi and the others are great too, but the price of this one gives it a real leg up in the universal accessibility department!

In addition to being $14/29 ( shipping auto added to pledge - $20 to the EU) on the kickstarter, it is also likely that selling this thing anywhere in the industrialized world is Illegal under copyright law.

Right now they have > 10x their required amount, they are going to have a hard time dealing with the new volume as is. So no benefit to joining at this point. It will likely be much cheaper to pick them up from newark/digikey or even sparkfun when they are actually in stock. assuming they actually ship and nobody with an IP claim to the linux kernel their chip supplier is stealing decides to sue them over it.