This is a sensible move. Else the charity would have to built up an Amazon style logistics operation from scratch -- a huge distraction from their mission to provide affordable and hackable computers for teaching, experimentation and kids to play with. I just managed to get my order in to Farnell. It wasn't easy. Their system was creaking under the load! (at 06:00 in the morning!)
A quick summary of what a Raspberry Pi has to offer: it's an electronics board about the size of a credit card (no casing is provided right now). At its heart is an ARM based Broadcom BCM2835 with integrated CPU, GPU and RAM clocked at 700MHz (and a pretty beefy GPU by all accounts!), 256MB RAM, HDMI video output, SD card for storage, 2 x USB for peripherals and external storage, 1 x 100Mbps ethernet port, 3.5mm jack for audio. And for hardware hackers, a general purpose IO port (with hardware support for UART, SPI, I2C etc).
Cost? Well it's supposed to be about $35. I got mine for €31.87 + VAT (ie about €35) from Farnell. But that includes shipping: so it's a fair price. (BTW: here is a direct link to the Raspberry Pi Model B at Farnell).
I look forward to my Pi in the coming days!
Update (1 Mar 2012): Just got an email from Farnell. Despite pushing in my order 13 minutes after the announcement I still didn't make the first batch of 10,000 units. ETA for my Pi: end April 2012 ☹
1 comment:
Get a good SSD card! http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224352/Slow_smartphone_It_s_not_the_network_it_s_NAND_flash
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