Looking at either for the little one for Xmas. Will an 8 year old know what to do with a raspberry pi? The Kano looks a little to kiddy?

Can he web browse and print pages from from a pi?

This is all new to me, btw he has bikes and Lego

Thanks!

Am I just being especially dumb, or is a Kano just a raspberry pi but with a fancy box and a price tag to match?

He won’t be the only 8 year old.

I don’t know

Plenty of books and online stuff on the Pi, including for kids. Never seen a Kano in real life. It does feel as though he might outgrow it (whereas the Pi is actually a middle aged man’s toy). 8 is quite young for a Pi to do much more than use Scratch (which is available online anyway). But by 10 he’ll probably have moved into more interesting stuff.

You can browse on the Pi (although the browser it comes with doesn’t seem that great – but you should be able to download others), and you can print (might take a wee bit of effort on your part to set up).

Er… how can you “out grow” a Kano but not a RasberryPi, when the Kano is a just a RasberryPi kit with a friendly educational OS for kids?

Just swap out the card for one with another OS on it whenever you want.

8 is quite young for a Pi to do much more than use Scratch

Depends on the kid…

[video]http://youtu.be/W76o_iG7Y7g[/video]

Er… how can you “out grow” a Kano but not a RasberryPi, when the Kano is a just a RasberryPi kit with a friendly educational OS for kids?

Which bits will they still be using? Small orange keyboard with comic sans letters? a plastic case that doesn’t provide easy access to the gpio ports etc? Yes you can reuse the board (and wifi adapater etc) but its < 1/2 the total cost. Personally I think that learning with KanOS and then having to “relearn” with Raspian (or other Linux) is an unnecessary step. My 7.5 yr old can find apps on a desktop etc. Pi’s “noobs” setup makes the install really simple and most of the online “how to’s” are Raspian based. Essentially as soon as you want to add anything on it will be easier with Raspian.

GrahamS – Member
‘8 is quite young for a Pi to do much more than use Scratch’
Depends on the kid…

A diabolical daughter. Just wait until she gets older and has more computer. 🙂

OP: Kano looks nice, but it is just a Raspberry Pi 2 bundled with some extra bits and a different OS (which you can freely download for any Pi).

The ‘standard’ Raspberry Pi OS is Raspbian, which is basically a little Linux OS (similar to Debian or Ubuntu if you have used those?)

The Kano OS looks like it is a bit more kiddie friendly and comes with stickers etc.

Both come installed with a Blockly-style programming language that serves as a common introduction to programming.

I doubt either are fully usable by an 8 year old without parental guidance, but Kano is probably the simpler of the two.
You know your own and your kids level of tech-saviness – so I’d choose according to that.

As others have said, if they outgrow the Kano system you can turn it into a ‘normal’ Raspberry Pi with Raspbian just by putting in a different SD card.

Cheers for the info. Looks like I’ll probably go with a starter set from pimoroni and see what come of it.

He has iPad for “normal” stuff so i guess look at these like a digital Lego. Fun to do together etc and slightly educational.

Cool, hopefully you saw the other thread?
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/raspberry-pi-for-kids-prezzie

Try discount code “landlubber” on Pimoroni (not sure if it still works or not)