ConsumerIT - For Europe's High Volume PC Retailers, Distributors & Builders

The Raspberry Pi Foundation announces the first batch its intriguing low-cost Linux micro-PCs has just entered production-- and pre-orders should start shipping from February 20 2012.

Designed as an affordable PC ideal to get children into computer programming, the Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer the size of a credit card. Currently a simple open board, it carries an ARM processor (running at 700MHz) on top of a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC, together with a Videocore 4 GPU the Foundation says is capable of HD playback.

It runs on ARM Linux, with the OS stored inside an SD card, meaning users can easily change OS (to another ARM Linux version) by replacing the SD card root partition.

Two models will be available-- Model A (with 128MB RAM and x1 USB port, costing $25) and the higher-end Model B (with 256MB RAM, x2 USB ports and Ethernet connection, costing $35). Both models carry RCA and HDMI outputs, and connect directly into TVs.

Soon the Raspberry Pi is also getting a proper commercial release-- on Q3 2012, as a cased device with "a polished educational software stack." The Foundation hopes the cased version will retain the current low price point, and will aim it at customers wanting a tiny home media centre PC as well as educators.

It all sounds very interesting, and we admit we already want to get our hands on one.

Go Raspberry Pi

Gartner reports Q4 2011 W. Europe PC shipments total 16.3M units-- a -16% Y-o-Y decline-- while total 2011 shipments are also down by -16% from 2010, reaching 58.5M units.

Clearly consumers prefer to spend their money on smartphones and tablets rather than PCs (despite dropping prices) as Q4 2011 represents the 4th consecutive quarter of shipment declines...

Particularly hard hit in Q4 2011 are the PC markets in Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain, with Y-o-Y declines of over -30%. The UK sees the worst Y-o-Y decline in 5 quarters (-19.6%) according to Gartner, while French and German PC shipments drop by -11.8% and -8.2% Y-o-Y.

Acer is looking for a makeover-- doubling European marketing budgets in the hopes to "change perceptions of the Acer brand," the Financial Times reports.

While the still the 2nd top PC vendor in W. Europe (following HP) Acer faces severe declines. The latest Gartner totals show European Q4 2011 Acer shipments are down by -46.1% Y-o-Y, with market share reaching 13.4% (down from 20.8 in Q4 2010).

Following the decision to rethink the rivalry with Intel, AMD reveals the company roadmap for 2012 and beyond-- one guiding the company away from x86-based processors towards lands of the system-on-a-chip (SoaC) variety, amongst others.

AMD is also going to focus on narrower market segments such as ultrathin notebooks, tablets, all-in-ones and cloud servers.