As a Scot, I’m periodically going to celebrate my parsimonious tendencies – and a new Kickstarter campaign has given me the chance to do just that. The CHIP project aims to put a full computer on a chip costing just $9.

According to Next Thing Co., the creators, “at 1Ghz and with 512MB of DDR3 RAM, CHIP is powerful enough to run real software, and handle the demands of a full GUI just as well as it handles attached hardware. Best of all, CHIP runs mainline Linux, which means it’s easier than ever to keep teaching it new tricks without inheriting a pile of kernel patches.” Furthermore, if the Kickstarter blurb is to be believed, CHIP offers built-in WiFi 802.11 B/G/N and Bluetooth 4.0, which puts it ahead of competing and much-loved cheapo systems like the Raspberry Pi 2, which needs USB dongles to get it wireless-capable, and also has a built-in composite video output as well as VGA or HDMI video connectivity via a simple adapter. And it looks as if the backers are bundling CHIP with a pretty comprehensive suite of Linux productivity and general internet applications, including Google’s Chromium browser, LibreOffice for work, VLC for audio and video, etc.

So far, the Kickstarter project indicates there’s some serious money in getting cheap, with 7,304 cheapasses at the time of writing pledging 343,577 of the $50,000 goal, and 28 days still to go. At this rate, I may even join them …

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Paul St John Mackintosh is a British poet, writer of dark fiction, and media pro with a love of e-reading. His gadgets range from a $50 Kindle Fire to his trusty Vodafone Smart Grand 6. Paul was educated at public school and Trinity College, Cambridge, but modern technology saved him from the Hugh Grant trap. His acclaimed first poetry collection, The Golden Age, was published in 1997, and reissued on Kindle in 2013, and his second poetry collection, The Musical Box of Wonders, was published in 2011.

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