[jonbro]

I don't know about books, but there are some similar single chip computers out there. You may want to take a look at the beagleboard and the beaglebone. I think the difference in both of those is a slightly higher cost, and slightly less good gpu (if they have a gpu at all, I am not sure).

I would just get an arduino and start messing around. While electricity is black magic to me, the programming end of microcontrollers is pretty easy to understand.

[daeken]

Rather than the beagleboard and other related systems, I'm now recommending the Trimslice (http://trimslice.com/web/) heavily. Picked one up a couple months ago and I absolutely love it. It's become my go-to ARM dev box.

[polymatter]

Trimslice is significantly more expensive though.

If you're a complete noob like me and still have difficulty reading electronics diagram, or sketchy on how transistors work, then get a cheap hackable arduino until you're ready for the more adventurous stuff.

HD video might be out of reach, but you can output to TV (see gameduino). Processing is limited, but you can ship processing to a server via ethernet (see nanode). Storage is limited, but you can have SD card shields (or use a remote server). Or how about radio control (see nanode RF http://http://nanode.eu/)?

Plus an arduino might be a nice companion with a Pi/Beaglebord/Trimslice for remote sensors or remote control. or maybe Lilipad arduino for wearable computing apps.

[wiradikusuma]

Very slick indeed! Do you know anything like this but more "customizable" (e.g. build to order)? Essentially I want something like Pi but with more RAM and HDD.

[dkersten]

Those look pretty cool. Pity about the price tag, though you do get a pretty powerful processor for it.