I would like to know what you love about the Rasberry Pi. If you don't know what a Rasberry Pi is,go to this website: http://www.raspberrypi.org/
I love just about everything about it. Minecraft Pi Edition, Quake 3 Arena, IDLE, Scratch, and all of the other programs. The only thing I think I want them to fix is having it use Wi-fi instead. I realize that this is hard to do, but it would be good to have that feature. Yes, there is a way to connect to the internet without wires, but that involves modifying some cables and stuff.
It is a computer. ~700MHz ARM chip (performs like a 300MHz pentium 2) with 512MB of RAM is the highest specs you can get on one, I believe.
And yes you can run python on it. You can run linux on it, so you can do just about anything (within the restrictions of the hardware, of course).
It's a very small computer, just like a smartphone, music player or handheld games console. There's a modified Linux kernel for it (just like Android uses a modified Linux kernel for smartphones - as a matter of fact, Android phones use the same class of CPU as the Raspberry Pi, the ARMv7) and some modified Linux distributions that run on it. Python can run on Linux and Linux can run on the Raspberry Pi, so Python can run on the Raspberry Pi.
It's awesome because the hardware is relatively simple and modern, which makes OS development for the RPi easier than for PC and because it costs a tiny fraction of the price that a PC of comparative power would have cost a decade ago while being small enough to fit in a pocket (although I don't recommend putting it in your pocket without something covering it).
Also, if anyone actually has one in their possession, I need advice if I were to get one in the future, what accessories would be advised? The list on that site is onverwhelming a bit.
I figure this would make for some very cool hobby projects to work with over the summer.
You need an SD card (not microSD; the adaptors seem to not work in my experience), some way to write to the SD card, and a 5 V, 0.15 A charger to power it. Then you need input/output devices - USB keyboard & mouse, earphones or 3.5mm speakers for audio and an HDMI capable monitor and HDMI cable for video.
Mine took about 6 weeks to arrive but I'm in the UK. It'd probably be a week longer in the US. Maybe longer. I know, it sucks.
@hellfire1
They do sell pre-loaded ones. It's trivial to do it yourself though, so if it costs more (Idk if it does) then you may as well do it yourself.
I already told you for the power supply. You want a 5V, 0.15 A cable. I use the charger that came with my smartphone.
Does the Raspberry Pi have any support for WAN or Wi-Fi hardware?
I'd love to carry around a small, versatile, and efficient computer system that can get things done throughout the day(e.g. general web surfing wirelessly, Word documents, NES/SNES emulation for games, etc.).
Pi looks determined, and its hardware and set up closely resembles that of a mid-end smartphone with some enhancements(Dedicated GPU to start with).
No, that's what I was pointing out. I have a microSD and an adaptor and it doesn't work. Though since I don't have an SD card writer (I was using a hacky method* of getting data onto the microSD) I can't test it with a "macro" SD card yet since I don't have a writer. I'm going to get a USB one.
* I have an MP3 player that uses a microSD card. I would connect it to my PC with the card in and was able to write to it directly from my PC. Then I'd take the card out and put it in the RPi with the adaptor. The RPi couldn't read from it, though, it seems.