The much anticipated new version of the popular $35 mini-pc - The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is here. The board made appearance at the FCC website revealing all details a few days ago and is now officially released by the foundation for ordering. Major new features include a new 64-bit ARM 8 1.2GHz Quad-core Broadcom BCM2837 CPU with on-board WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy. Everything else remains the same, the maximum power draw has been upgraded to 2.5A@5V from 1.8A@5V to allow more power hungry USB devices without a need for a powered USB hub.

$35 Raspberry Pi has the crown of being world's smallest and cheapest computer, but this seems not to be the case anymore. C.H.I.P. - a brand new entry to the mini-computing scene has already been successfully crowd-funded at kickstarter, the "100% open-source" product features attractive functionality and power for a price-tag of $9 which includes a 1Ghz A13 Allwinner CPU, 512MB of DDR3 RAM, 4GB NAND storage, USB, Micro USB, Video/Audio/MIC Composite, Bluetooth 4.0 and Wifi 802.11B/G/N.

The tiny C.H.I.P. SOC is designed to run Debian Linux including modern desktop GUI apps like LibreOffice, VLC, or the Firefox or Chrome web browsers. 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. Do watch the introduction video shared by MAKE magazine of this exciting new development for maker's community.

Project "Raspberry Pi" with aim to launch a viable - world's smallest yet cheapest computing platform has a new rival. It seems citing the traction gained by "Raspberry Pi", Intel has now unveiled there own plans to launch a ultra-portable PC hardware - Intel's ultra-small "Next Unit of Computing" (NUC) PC.

Intel's NUC is a complete computer, featuring a Sandy Ivy Bridge Core i3/i5 CPU, Thunderbolt, HDMI, and USB 3.0 ports, two laptop memory slots, two mini PCIe headers - all nicely tucked into a portable 4x4 inches motherboard assembly. Since, this is not a final product and not much is know about it - speculations have that the Intel NUC won't be as cheap as "Raspberry Pi" but should retail at approximately $100-$300 range and is expected to arrive in the second half of the year.

If you liked the Plug and boot USB Stick Computer here is something you would absolutely love - a credit-card sized, ultra-low-cost (~15GBP or 25USD), portable computing device capable of playing 1080p30 H.264 video, audio, OpenGL ES 2.0, HDMI output, USB, SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot, 700MHz Broadcom media processor (having an ARM11 core, Broadcom GPU core, DSP core and support for Package-on-Package (PoP) RAM), 128/256 MB RAM, 100MBit Ethernet, and a number of I/O pins for a serial port and other custom expansion.

A working Raspberry Pi Beta Board video demonstration booting into OS, playing 1080p Video, audio and games while connected to a standard HDMI TV.