In brief: The Raspberry Pi Foundation is celebrating the eighth anniversary of its popular microcomputer with a price cut that's sure to get your attention. You can thank falling RAM prices for the discount.
The original Raspberry Pi launched on February 29, 2012 - Leap Day - priced at just $35. The hobby board, with its 700MHz ARM11 processor and 256MB of RAM, was a hit with enthusiasts and sold out within hours.
The foundation has been able to maintain that momentum over the years with meaningful updates and consistent pricing, helping to further programming efforts in schools around the world and give hobbyists a powerful tool to tinker with. With every subsequent product, Pi whittled down its compromises a bit further and slowly started to gain ground on traditional PCs in terms of performance.
Last year's Raspberry Pi 4 is now roughly 40 times faster than the original from 2012 and has 10x the I/O bandwidth, 4x the number of pixels on screen and dual-band wireless networking. More than 30 million units have been sold since launch, we're told.
To celebrate its eighth birthday, Raspberry Pi Foundation has slashed the price of its 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 from $45 down to $35 - the same price the original debuted at all those years ago. CEO Eben Upton said falling RAM prices made the cut possible.
Upton said the price cut is permanent, too, and that the 1GB and 4GB variants will remain at their current prices of $35 and $55, respectively. Really, there's no reason to even consider buying the 1GB variant now as you can get twice the memory for the same price.
Now, what will the next generation of Pi computers deliver? Only time will tell.
Masthead credit: Raspberry Pi 4 by nataliajakubcova