Raspberry Pi goes on sale

A new British computer that costs just £22 went on sale at 6am on Wednesday morning – and immediately sold out, crashing the websites selling it in the process.

The Raspberry Pi is intended to inspire a new generation of schoolchildren to learn to program.

Raspberry Pi is a charitable foundation set up by Eben Upton and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory. Upton decided to develop Rasberry Pi when he realised was that schools weren't teaching pupils the basics of computing any more – they were just teaching them how to use software. "Children were learning about applications, which are pretty low-value skills. They weren't being properly equipped to think about how computers are programmed, about how they're built and how we make them work."

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, suggested devices like it could play an important role in the kind of computer class the government envisages. "Initiatives like the Raspberry Pi scheme will give children the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of programming," he said. "This is a great example of the cutting edge of education technology happening right here in the UK."