Raspberry Pi Model A+ Arrives – The Cheapest and Smallest Pi Yet

For example, let's say you have a company which does school scoreboards, you might install 3x a month, 36/year. You can do a custom Pi solution for $35 (+software), or buy the commercial solution for $150+/board.

For that type of operation you likely wouldn't make your money back having someone else produce a bespoke board for your 36/year installations. Even at three times that number it likely wouldn't be cost effective.

You see this a lot in niche installations. Up until somewhat recently many POS terminals in small stores were just standard desktop PCs wrapped in a custom case and with some custom software (sometimes written in VB6(!)).

Even if kids only use them for XBMC clients -- they have to learn how to write the image to the SD card and then boot it, etc. Might not be much -- but that's time better spent than just killing more bad guys in CoD.

There have been plenty of blog posts by the foundation detailing how students are using RPi's in schools. There's been a few times someone has written into one of the Podcasts I listen to and talked about using RPi's in education right here in the US. Playing with GPIO pins is a great way to get kids excited in circuits, computing, tinkering, etc.

There have also been some good examples of taking RPi out to remote areas in Africa and what-not and building a basic computer lounge where people can come and get online, some for the first time in their lives. Now that's inspirational, and educational.

There's a lot of copy-cats of the RPi out now -- most of which are slightly more expensive but offer higher performance. It's important to recall that before the RPi, small form factor SoC boards existed -- but usually were twice, three time, or more the price. The relatively cheap cost of the RPi started all this.