Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Thus is not a replacement for a "real" computer BUT...it's pretty neat. Takes no effort to get it set up and running once you have your operating system on a SD card (or a MicroSD in an adapter). You will need extra things to make it work: 1. Power supply. You need a power supply MICRO USB connector and at least .7 amps. A Kindle fast charger works fine. 2. Display cable. a regular HDMI cable works fine if your monitor supports it. The composite connector works, but it is *very* difficult to get a usable picture on a TV this way. You'll need to edit a configuration file to change resolution. 3. Keyboard and pointing device. Because you only have 2 USB ports and a wired ethernet port, you'll have to juggle whether you want to use a wireless USB, a keyboard/touch pad combo, etc. Most standard keyboards will work on it. 4. Internet connection (if you want internet connectivity). This can be wired or wireless. I used the edimax 7811 adapter which worked right out of the box. 5. Operating System on an SD card (minimum 4GB, class 4 - Amazon has a Sony 16GB class 10 for $11-$12 - that's what I would use). There are a number of different ways to go. The Rasberry Pi foundation uses a Debian implementation of Linux called "Wheezy" which works well. This is a free download. 6. powered USB hub. If you want more peripherals or do not have a keyboard/touchpad combo you might want one of these. HINTS: How-to-geek has an excellent step-by-step guide to setting it up. But here's what you do. On a Windows machine, download Wheezy (free), use imgwriter(free) to write the image file to your SD Card (you can't just copy the file to the card). Assemble everything you plug into the machine except the power first, slide in the SD card (it will stick out of the machine a 1/2 inch) then plug-in the power cord (a cell phone adapter with a minimum .700 amps and a micro USB , NOT a micro B, connector) in and it should fire up to a configuration screen. The only options you'll probably need to use are A) expand the file system to take the whole card B) set your time zone and C) set the machine to boot into the graphical interface. (if you have a good power supply - 1 amp - you can overclock at this point to make the machine faster). Re-boot and you're in a very windows-esque operating environment. If you have internet, connect using the icon on the starting desktop. Suggestion: replace the midori browser which seems very wonky with Chromium (the open-source version of Google Chrome) Open a terminal (also on the starting desktop) and type without quotes "sudo apt-get install chromium-browser" It will browse, it will get Email it will NOT use flash (even the Chromium "built-in" is not there) because flash is not compatible with the CPU. You can *try* to use the open-source (free) "gnash" but frankly...it's not going to be very workable. If you set the machine up as a XBMC machine it will do some of this, but it is a totally different installation process. It's fun! try it. Lots of things you can do with this. It's about the size (if you put it in a case) of a cigarette box.