It’s only been a year or so since the world first started salivating over the Raspberry Pi.  Not only over the potential of the Pi, but the value as well.  We have seen plenty of clones since, but this device is the first one to really outshine the Pi is every way conceivable.  The Cubieboard is packing to following specifications:

• 1G ARM cortex-A8 processor, NEON, VFPv3, 256KB L2 cache
• Mali400, OpenGL ES GPU
• 1GB DDR3 @480MHz
• HDMI 1080p Output
• 10/100M Ethernet
• 4GB Nand Flash
• 2 USB Host, 1 micro SD slot, 1 SATA, 1 ir
• 96 extend pin including I2C, SPI, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, R-TP..
• Running Android, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions

From the project’s indiegogo page:

What can cubieboard be used for

Lightweight Linux Desktop - With USB mouse and keyboard and HDMI monitor to cubieboard, you can use it as a light weight linux desktop. Cubieboard support most of the ARM linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch ARM Linux, Puppy etc.

Android TV - Connect wifi dongle and the wireless air mouse to cubieboard, and HDMI output to TV. You can enjoy Android with Youtube, Netflix and many more apps on cubieboard.

NAS - Cubieboard can drive 2.5 inch hard disk, you can use it as a home network file server.

Home Automation - There are 96 pin expansion headers on cubieboard, most of them can be used as GPIO. With network access, you can control a lot of things.

Given the addition of a SATA port, this is one of the first Pi clones with the potential to make a big splash as a NAS device for your home network.  That said, we would happily pay an extra 10 bucks for gigabit.

The other big difference between this device and the Pi is the price.  You get what you pay for, and with a $49 price tag it’s easy to imagine this as a bigger and better alternative to the Pi, which retails for a strict $25 and $35 dollars.  This makes us infinitely curious what $100 will buy us…

Source | Indiegogo