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They've just posted on their blog that they will be making a huge announcement on Wednesday. Hopefully they will be opening the orders up. I'm ready to get a hold of one and replace my PS3 for streaming. I have a launch console and would like to lighten its load.
www.raspberrypi.org
Are you guys planning on buying one?
Well considering I'm not sure exactly on how it could be useful other then for teaching kids to program, probably not. You would probably better served just spending an extra $30 or so and buying a roku for streaming.
I'm going to buy one for sure. I'm not quite sure what I'd use it for yet. I'm interested to see what kind of driver support exists on the ARM version of Debian/Fedora for things like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833315091
A low power, wireless Linux box just a tad larger than an Altoids tin for under $50 is quite interesting for a number of reasons.
I'm also curious to see what these kind of devices mean for piracy. A standard SD card can hold up to 32GB of data. That's quite a bit. You've got a $50 server that is going to be impossible to track, and it can run on batteries. You could reinvent the street vendor who sells bootleg DVDs on the corner. You just name your AP something like "GET NEW MOVIES FOR $1"
It can stream 1080p using xbmc. It also runs linux. It is a very powerful device for only 35 dollars. The goal was to put a low cost computer into the hands of schools, but its turned into so much more. The homebrew community is going to be huge.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boneycat
I;m curious to see the cases that will be coming out for it. This thing is seriously small. I'll pay off the 35 dollars in electricity savings from not running the launch PS3 to stream.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
The biggest thing is going to be embedded uses. Facial recognition locks for under 100 bucks. Hobbyists will be able to computerize their homes for hardly anything. Robot programming, smart lights, alarm system, internet house control, etc etc will be dirt cheap. I can't wait to see what people come up with.
Midnight central time. 2 hours.
EDIT:
Pretty poor launch. They simply link to two British electronic distributors that don't have their **** together at all. One has you register for a preorder by filling out name and email while the other site just breaks when you add it to cart since they don't have a price on it.
Ouch, the distributors now seem to be marking up the Raspberry Pi:
http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/pro...43&Ntt=83T1943
$20 non-refundable handling fee. I managed to get an order in through Farnell, but I've heard they want $35 to ship it to the US or $20 for sea shipping (lol.) Kind of crazy since I had a 5 dollar chinese watch shipped from china for free.
I've heard if you manage to get an order in right now, they won't be able to fulfill it until mid summer. Oh well.
Edit again: I see what's happening. The two distributors that have direct access to Raspberry Pi sold their stock to other electronics retailers. These retailers seem to be marking them up because they are not bound by the terms the Raspberry Pi people set. That's were these handling fees are coming from.
Too bad they didn't have the capacity to do this on their own. It looks like a big mess.
What a load of ********. Why even go through a retailer or distributor for this kind of stuff these days? A simple Shopify store will do all the work for you. All you have to do is print the shipping label and buy a box to put it in. My guess is that they couldn't get the 300k or so to do a 10k order. Really? Are things that bad you can't get a loan for a finished product that obviously has demand? WTH?
I was under the impression that they were going to give priority to people on the mailing list. I've been on the mailing list for months and never even received anything last night or this morning.
One distributor has even said they will not be selling to individuals. They could have thrown up a kickstarter page and collected a quick million, so I don't know why they decided to pawn these off on two major electronics distributors that are clearly not in line with the non-profit mentality of the project.
As of right now there is no option for US customers and there are no plans to bring it to a US based distributor at the moment. The cost is actually 26.55 pounds or $43 + international shipping. You are looking at 60-70 bucks for something that was promised to be 25-35.
That's not even including the mark up from newark.
I'm going to shoot them an email later today and see what it takes to get involved. I could whip up a simple 1-product ecommerce page that takes Google Checkout and PayPal in a few hours. My dad has plenty of warehouse space. We've got boxes just the right size for this little guy.
As long as they will let me do a minimum order of 1,000 units I'd totally be down for selling these in the US. I really don't understand how they botched this so badly.
Lol watch you get 100,000 order in one day.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
I wouldn't be stupid. I'd mark the quantity so it sells out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timman_24
If I could sell through 1,000 units in an hour I'd just go down to the bank and ask for a massive loan. If I could show 100,000 orders (or intent to order) in a day the bank would cut me a check no problem.
That's what I'm saying I don't understand. Getting a loan under these conditions is very easy.
$35 for a computer is awesome. I could see a whole market around cases, accessories, etc.. It could be a very good, simple business for a while.
I mean, if you walk into Best Buy you'll end up paying $35 for a USB cable. All Raspberry Pi needs is a little marketing facelift to make it into a hot product.
I agree what it needs is a bundle with a sd card preloaded with Linux and a plastic case. Sell it for 45-50 bucks and watch the consumer desktop market die. Upgrade to a v6 arm chip and bump the memory a bit in six moths and then run windows 8 no problem.
I'd probably be willing to pay all the way up to $99 depending on what it comes with. I could easily see fitting this into a larger aluminum tin maybe the size of an 2.5" external HDD and fitting it with WiFi/BT, 32GB SD card, 4 usb ports, etc.
I'm most interested to see browser performance actually, and if it can run 2D/3D acceleration in the browser. I'm starting to think of more and more uses for something like this. You could sell these to hotel chains in mass if they can run ChromeOS decently. A LOT of companies need a UPS/FedEx shipping computer…done. Web-based POS terminals? Done. Small yet capable, and it uses less than $1/mo of electric even when left running 24/7.
They say it can do H.264 decoding at 1080p. I don't quite believe that, at least not at a decent frame rate. But if it can do even 720p fluid with some background processes running there's some really good applications for it.
Damnit. Now I REALLY want one.
I'm very curious to see if it will do 1080p decoding like they've been saying. Just think of all the possibilities. Arcade machines, SNES/NES emulation, etc would be a lot of fun. I'm curious to see how far this can go. I'm sure they could easily make dual/quad core versions as ARM architecture keeps advancing in the future.
What I'm really excited about is messing around with parallel computing. I'd like to hook a cluster of 5-10 of these up for fun.
EDIT: Expected delivery just came in for mine. Looks like I am allocated to April 24th.
I hope the markup will come down... placed my e-mail on it...
Some dudes posted ebay auctions with 4x mark up haha. They were pulled because there was no way they had stock. I wouldn't be surprised if resellers have about a month window of making some good money on these until the April shipments roll in. The longest wait I've heard for someone preordering is early May. The first people will receive their raspberry pi in middle of March.Quote:
Originally Posted by proxops-pete
So all-in-all, aside from the US distribution mess up, I think they did okay trying to meet demand. Farnell was saying they were getting 600 emails a second during peak demand. :eek:
I can't wait for these to be more available, and in the US. I'll be buying at least 1 for sure, and most likely quite a few more. So many uses. Awesome little product.