Raspberry Pi (ie: htpc for cheap) announcement (release?) at 0600h GMT on Wednesday 29 February 2012

AVAILABLE FOR BACKORDER
http://slickdeals.net/f/4009796-R...ng-Fee-35#

The Raspberry Pi foundation is a non-profit. These units are sold at cost, under the mission of spreading computers and technology interest in education. The first batch of 10,000 is intended for developers who will further the project, the foundation, and its goals .

Always check the faq
http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

How many can I buy in one go?
The buy one restriction appears to now be lifted.


Boards dont come with cases. First batch is considered a dev release.

There is little documentation at this point. If you dont know how to use dd to create the boot file system, you may want to wait for the next release.

This is an ARM chip. It will not run Android or Windows due to memory amount. The estimated speed is about a pentium 300mhz.


There's two models - A and B. Model A will only cost $25, but has no ethernet and only 1 USB port (model B has ethernet and two USB ports for $35).
Model A will not be available until a later date.

You can only boot off the SD card, you can't boot off ethernet or USB.

The estimate is between 60k and 100k people are going to attempt to buy the almost 10k boards they will be selling. This is based on the number of downloads of the debian file system made available in the first 48 hours. Next batch is 2 weeks to 1 month away based on turn around of the test board vs the release board. These are estimates based on data from forums and statements by rpi. My estimate was very low! 200-300k or more interest!

--- update ---

Sold out fast, now it appears they are being sold in a build on demand process to a point. Back order people are posting estimated ship dates in the late March range.

Raspi has said that later versions should offer more and cost less as they have volume orders, however this may change based on the build on demand.

--- update 2 ---
Huge shipping charge is now being called a mistake. So free shipping and LONG waits.

The next order is going in, about 100k being ordered between the two companies. I assume another order will go in shortly after that.