Says connect to tv, mine is old, how about hdmi cable to external

Look at the diagram of the R-Pi board; If you want to connect to a TV, on the far side of the board from the HDMI connector is an RCA connector to connect to the Video-In of a Television. This makes the R-Pi accessable to people without a computer monitor, which I'm assuming is the functionality you were asking about. This will give you a display, but without the resolution to be gained on an HDMI-capable device.

You can also run the device "headless" (no monitor at all), and use an ssh program to log into it from another computer, provided you have the "B" version of the board and have it connected to a network. This won't give you the "cool desktop" interface, but it will allow you to work with the system.

The original orders of the R-Pi devices will not include a pre-loaded SD card, but later packages will optionally include this. However, if you already have another computer, it's not that difficult to get an empty card and load your own, and that has the advantage of allowing you to choose the amount of storage you'll have on your system. The required size is 2gig, meaning that the system will fit there. But I'm not sure how much room that will leave you to work with it afterward. I've already built a 16gig card which is sitting here ready and waiting for my R-Pi to arrive. This will give me room to install additional software and create files of my own to experiment with.

There are instructions on the Raspberry Pi site describing how to install the Fedora image, and a very handy utility for doing it on Windows. (It's actually even simpler on Mac; just one command.) There are plenty of folks here and on the Raspberry Pi site willing to help and to answer specific questions, but give it a try and see how far you can get.

Worst case, depending on where you are, I'm sure that someone would be willing to let you mail them an SD card and install an image for you and mail it back to you. If you're in the US, i'll do it for you. Contact me off-list if that would help.

Look at the diagram of the R-Pi board; If you want to connect to a TV, on the far side of the board from the HDMI connector is an RCA connector to connect to the Video-In of a Television. This makes the R-Pi accessable to people without a computer monitor, which I'm assuming is the functionality you were asking about. This will give you a display, but without the resolution to be gained on an HDMI-capable device.

You can also run the device "headless" (no monitor at all), and use an ssh program to log into it from another computer, provided you have the "B" version of the board and have it connected to a network. This won't give you the "cool desktop" interface, but it will allow you to work with the system.

The original orders of the R-Pi devices will not include a pre-loaded SD card, but later packages will optionally include this. However, if you already have another computer, it's not that difficult to get an empty card and load your own, and that has the advantage of allowing you to choose the amount of storage you'll have on your system. The required size is 2gig, meaning that the system will fit there. But I'm not sure how much room that will leave you to work with it afterward. I've already built a 16gig card which is sitting here ready and waiting for my R-Pi to arrive. This will give me room to install additional software and create files of my own to experiment with.

There are instructions on the Raspberry Pi site describing how to install the Fedora image, and a very handy utility for doing it on Windows. (It's actually even simpler on Mac; just one command.) There are plenty of folks here and on the Raspberry Pi site willing to help and to answer specific questions, but give it a try and see how far you can get.

Worst case, depending on where you are, I'm sure that someone would be willing to let you mail them an SD card and install an image for you and mail it back to you. If you're in the US, i'll do it for you. Contact me off-list if that would help.