> But in its present form novice computer users - weaned on the simplicity of Windows PCs, smartphones and iPads - may struggle to get to grips with the Raspberry Pi.

Kinda the point, isn't it? If you're not interested in learning anything, then why would you be interested in a device intended to be programmable?

And it's frankly a function that can't be as well served by expensive PCs, smartphones, and tablets.

What's next? A review that says learning algebra requires way too much math?

I learned about computers first on the 'Speccy' (Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48+) at home, then on BBC Micros at school. Neither of these had a GUI and both relied on typing commands to achieve absolutely anything. I remember having to RTFM to get started on the Speccy, and I was probably about 8 or 9 at the time. Spoon-feeding kids by making everything very easy is no way for them to learn about the nuts and bolts of computing, which is my perception of the Reaspberry Pi should be for. If they want a GUI there are plenty of options out there; if they want to learn to program they won't be able to do it cheaper than this.

"But I do worry that some people may lack the patience to learn how to control the OS - especially as the device is being sold as a machine for encouraging children to learn to code. If kids run into enough of these barriers just trying to use the machine, isn't there a danger that they'll lose interest?"

Its being sold to encourage children to learn code. LEARN not have something presented on a plate that needs no intelligence or interaction. Good grief man lets get some children thinking for a change. Oh, by the way, you should never start a sentence with 'but'!!! Look it up in a dictionary .......

I agree with the comments, but ...
I think we must remember that when we learned with Sinclair or other computers of his time, the offer was very limited.

In the present day there are several competitors, from Blackberry to Windows Mobile to Android, so ...
the kids now have several choices, think for a minute, a "normal" boy who has the oportunity to use Raspberry, or the other ones.

Would you dare to bet?

Even though the price is very attractive! ... maybe this is a piece of hardware whose primary market will be hobbysts, students, hardware designers, ... I don't know, but the experience has show to me that if the product is good, it will prevail.

Cheers for everybody!

Sometimes doing things the hard way doesn't teach you any more than doing them the easy way; it may even teach you less because you get less done.

Menus and dialogue boxes (if done properly, which is distressingly rare) can lead the student to delve into things that they might never find with a command line interface.

The initial release of the Pi is *intended* for developers and learners. The whole point of learning is to teach you something and give you expertise, point and click won't do that for you, and yes there is always a chance that if you tell someone to learn something even remotely difficult that some will give up, but that is an essential risk. This is fundamentally the difference between a linux distro like Ubuntu and something like Arch. Arch requires you to install the machine from the command line, edit text files, study documentation, and learn commands before you can finally get a usable operating system. The documentation in fact spells out what you should do and why you should do it, and in doing so you will learn from that one process more about the underpinnings of linux than you will in 3 years of using Ubuntu -- just like the Raspberry. Yes learning is hard, but that's the whole point.