Many weeks ago when the Raspberry Pi was launched I personally got the impression that had already been manufactured and ready for sale on the launch date. It turns out that this is not the case and they only had a limited supply.
None appear to be for sale at the moment as it has been reported that they have had a manufacturing error where they soldered on the wrong components to the boards.
What the Raspberry Pi people did was, instead of taking the risk of manufacturing them themselves, they licensed out the design to a couple of different companies in the UK, Premier Farnell and RS Components. I bet they're glad they did it this way as it's an Open Source device and the manufacturing error would have cost them big time.
I registered my interest with both companies and when I got an email indicating that the actual cost of the £22 device once postage and packaging had been taken in to consideration came closer to £30 I unsubscribed and deleted the message.
I don't know what RS's total price will be as they are not taking any payments until they have the devices to sell which is a responsible thing to do.
Useful Links:
I was on the RS website at 6:00 the morning they went live with it. After an hour of getting server time-outs (it was so popular it was like a DDOS attack) I eventually put my name down for one but I haven't heard anything yet...
ReplyDeleteI don't even know why I want one. I just do because it's so cheap.
I'll probably just use it as a media player for the TV.
I also have no real idea why I want one!
DeleteI'm starting to learn about Linux and you can run Linux on this so it could come in handy from a techie point of view.