At the moment, our two daughters (7 and 9) share an old PC, but it’s creaking a bit and they often want to use it at the same time so end up on my laptop or my wife’s netbook.

I’ve got two old 17″ monitors from work, so want to set them up with a PC each. But I don’t want to spend a fortune so a couple of Raspberry Pi seem ideal. The monitors have DVI inputs, so I’ll be able to connect them to the HDMI port of a Pi.

I’m probably going to be able to borrow a Pi to play with before buying, but thought I’d sound out the nerds geeks on here beforehand as I know a few have them.

My kids do pretty much everything in a browser, so software shouldn’t be an issue. But, they need to be able to use certain things for it to be workable, and that’s what I wanted to check:

[list]
[*]Google Drive[/*]
[*]Moshi Monsters[/*]
[*]Bin Weevils[/*]
[*]You Tube[/*]
[*]Didi games[/*]
[/list]

Anyone got experience of using them in this way? Also, am I right in thinking I can just swap out memory cards if I want to use them for anything fun myself?

Although this review (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/desktops/374290/raspberry-pi-model-b) would say no. Hmm.

Doesnt it run Debian? I run Fedora and use Google drive with no issues. Couldn’t comment on the other things though…

Little bit of faff getting everything installed, but not too much issue for a Linux geek.

Think OS is (still) limited to various Linux installations? Just got a new card for mine, so was going to do a fresh install with a new OS release. Then I’ll be able to say how much effort it is now.

No clue if those things that sound like games need anything like Flash (or even if it’s ported).

They are cool and fun toys, but they’d probably be a bit slow for the web stuff except for the video, and I don’t think they run flash which might limit some games. They’re not really a general purpose home computer – think more mobile phone level of processing power & technology.

Raspberry pi is very good for the job it was designed for. I suspect that for what they want though it will creek a bit. Also there is no google drive for Linux at the moment so R-pi can’t support that other than through the web interface.

From experience Moshi Monsters, and probably a few others on your list use Flash, which doesn’t seem to be available for the Pi.

Ah, lack of Flash might be a deal-breaker. Although, I’d be quite happy for them to spend less time on them.

few others on your list use Flash, which doesn’t seem to be available for the Pi

I think Flash ‘can’ be installed but is not for the faint hearted and the pi might suffer from it being installed.
I’ve played with ours a little and although it would do most jobs (but maybe not the Flash content games) it’s not really designed as a ‘normal’ pc.