Gooseberry board. Simply a tablet PCB without the screen. (via Gooseberry)
As an answer to the question of which is more popular in the mini-PC world, it all depends on what you’re using their respective boards. Sure, there are dozens more currently on the market (Cubieboard, VIA’s APC and the FOXG20 to name a few) but these two boards are very similar to one another in most respects. The Pi model B is an exposed system board that features a Broadcomm SoC outfitted with an ARM11-based 700MHz processor, VideoCore GPU and 512MB of RAM. Upon the boards launch (February 2012) it was able to use a plethora of operating systems including Raspbian, multiple flavors of Linux and RISC (to name a few) straight out of the box which is great for hobbyists who want to incorporate the board into different projects. One of the great things about Raspberry Pi is that it was designed and manufactured by the Raspberry Pi Foundation (as a teaching aid to promote computer science in schools) and therefore users get increased support should problems arise. The boards creators have also recently started to release hardware add-ons for Pi such as a postage stamp sized 5-megapixel camera capable of capturing 1080p images. The company’s move to release peripheral add-ons for the Pi looks to increase the number of projects that can be accomplished using the board. While some were anxiously awaiting the Raspberry Pi release, another (anonymous) contender in the mini-PC market threw their hat into the ring with the introduction of the Gooseberry.
The Gooseberry board was introduced to satisfy the needs of those waiting to get their hands the Pi, but those who released it on the market didn’t create it. Essentially the Gooseberry is a Chinese-made tablet PCB without a case or a screen that was purchased in bulk by and rebranded as the Gooseberry. The company’s website makes no claim that it was developed by them and in fact states that it is a tablet board, which is on par with the functionality of the Raspberry Pi. The Gooseberry’s load-out features an Allwinner Cortex-A8 CPU (running @ 1GHz), a Mali GPU, 512MB of RAM and built-in 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi that is slightly better than the Pi’s load-out (considering the Pi’s lack of onboard wireless) but not by much. Both boards feature almost identical ports such as USB 2.0, HDMI and 3.5mm audio jacks. Storage for the Gooseberry features 4GB of NAND with an additional slot for microSD cards while the Pi has no dedicated storage it does feature slots for MMC, SDIO and microSD as well which can be viewed as both good and bad depending on the project. The Gooseberry comes with Android 2.3 preinstalled as its primary OS but can be switched out with Ubuntu, Android 4.0 or Puppy Linux with advanced knowledge on how to do so. Prices for the boards differ as well with the Raspberry Pi currently running at $35 on average and the Gooseberry costing almost twice as much at $62, however depending on the project paying more for the Gooseberry might save users a few headaches.
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