Well the Rasberry Pi Foundation are not a commercial entity it is idealism, for the sake of education. It is not the target of Rasberry Pi to make a profit, like every commercial body.
So if you want to use it as a fully fledged PC you would buy the B version for about $30.
You need to recycle your Keyboard and your Monitor/TV but that is it. If you use it as a thin client against a computer with 6G memory and LTSP installed you can run 20 Rasberries against it. If you want flash and heavy graphics then you may want to increase the memory on the server.
If you want to control a front door camera or a drone, then you will do just fine with Raspberry A+.
But You can equip an entire classroom with fully fledged computers for a fraction of the normal cost. On power on the Raspberry would download an image from the server and that could be anything from an office suite to a server.
I can assure you that my Rasberry B is just one wifi dongle away from being just as good as
Boxee box that costs $250!
That is over $200 more than I spent (Yes the flash cards are extra but you can switch them to get a multi function computer - Media center one day, and Office computer the next).
No remote control you say? Just download the free app to your Android phone and you have it (XBMC)
But it is kind of natural that you have to add components to this minimal approach to computing - which I love
Kids all over the planet are learning computing with this one and it is great for that.
And it has even been used to
control cars or how much power an Electric car should use. The "kids" that made this one are students on the Norwegian tech university.
