Raspberry Pi Gets RAM Upgrade, In The Same Price

Hugely popular microcomputer Raspberry Pi has got a hardware upgrade. Its $35 Model B that used to come with 256 MB RAM will now be shipping with 512 MB RAM. Good news is, there is no increase in the price tag. The reason behind the upgrade is the users’ demand for better configuration. As Raspberry Pi founder Eben wrote in his blog:

One of the most common suggestions we’ve heard since launch is that we should produce a more expensive “Model C” version of Raspberry Pi with extra RAM. This would be useful for people who want to use the Pi as a general-purpose computer, with multiple large applications running concurrently, and would enable some interesting embedded use cases (particularly using Java) which are slightly too heavyweight to fit comfortably in 256MB.

In case one has already ordered the older Model B and yet to receive it, he will be getting the upgraded version with 512 MB RAM. A firmware upgrade is expected soon for the newer models.

Why the price remains the same?

One of the main reason why the price remains the same is that Raspberry Pi does not want to lose the tag of “cheap and best” microcomputer in the market. There are many candidates, like $99 mini supercomputer Parallella, who will give stiff competition to Raspberry Pi if it increases its price. Already many have not been happy with Raspberry Pi and web has enough articles discussing why Raspberry Pi sucks.

Though the price remains the same, it does not mean Raspberry Pi will be running out of the box. You still need things to get Raspberry Pi running. In any case, this is definitely a good news for those who were thinking of buying Raspberry Pi. Bad news if you bought it last week.