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Raspberri PI Release Announcement

raspberrypi.org

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Re: Raspberri PI Release Announcement

#191

Post by rmk2 »

I am really disappointed about their choice of distributors. Neither Farnell's nor RS Components subsidiaries in Germany and Austria ship to private individuals, you have to be a corporate buyer in order to be able to order from them. And since they "have" local subsidiaries, the "international" sites of both companies don't ship to either country.

In short: in Germany or Austria, you cannot buy the Raspberry Pi unless you go through an intermediary. This seems to be a really bad choice for a platform aimed at education.

And judging by the Twitter comments, at least (potential) customers in Sweden and the Netherlands have the same problem.

http://twitter.com/#!/Raspberry_Pi/status/174752572194824192

http://twitter.com/#!/Raspberry_Pi/status/174779094783897600

I guess what bothers me is how they don't seem to care too much about not being buyable by private entities in a number of European countries, or how they at least didn't bother to check up-front...

Still, I hope I can get one of the next batches somehow

Re: Raspberri PI Release Announcement

#192

Post by maayank »

rmk2 wrote: post #191

I am really disappointed about their choice of distributors. Neither Farnell's nor RS Components subsidiaries in Germany and Austria ship to private individuals, you have to be a corporate buyer in order to be able to order from them. And since they "have" local subsidiaries, the "international" sites of both companies don't ship to either country. In short: in Germany or Austria, you cannot buy the Raspberry Pi unle…

You can use a forwarding service like http://www.ukpostbox.com

Re: Raspberri PI Release Announcement

#193

Post by rmk2 »

maayank wrote: post #192
rmk2 wrote: post #191

I am really disappointed about their choice of distributors. Neither Farnell's nor RS Components subsidiaries in Germany and Austria ship to private individuals, you have to be a corporate buyer in order to be able to order from them. And since they "have" local subsidiaries, the "international" sites of both companies don't ship to either country. In short: in Germany or Austria, you cannot buy the Raspberry Pi unle…

You can use a forwarding service like http://www.ukpostbox.com

I know that there are ways. There is apparently also an intermediary i Austria. I'll have a look at that forwarding site.

I just wanted to point that out, since it gets drowned a bit on Twitter and I didn't see much posted about it.

Re: Raspberri PI Release Announcement

#194

Post by napierzaza »

What better way to teach young people about the current computing landscape. Make a product based on a closed-source proprietary chip-set, distribute through middle men that deal only with other companies.

Hope you like working with the Pi in class, you can't buy one for yourself or get to the meat of the system without an NDA. If you were interested in that...

Re: Raspberri PI Release Announcement

#195

Post by semanticist »

glogla wrote: post #182
semanticist wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really directly comparable to an Arduino - it's a full-blown ARM Linux computer, with HDMI, ethernet, and a couple of orders of magnitude more RAM than an Arduino. It also has some limited IO available, if you're prepared to solder headers onto the board. An Arduino is basically a whole bunch of IO, including PWM output and analogue input, that you can wrap up with some glue logic or send straight to a compu…

Yes, the combination would be interesting. Lot of projects in our new media/intermedia/interactive art lab use Arduino for interfacing with buttons, ultrasound sensor, pressure sensors and similar gizmos, while using normal PC for logic or video playback on projectors or something. Raspberry is capable enough for that (though I'm not sure the artists would be happy hacking it in python instead of Processing ;) ), pc'…

I'm not sure why they'd need to use Python, Java's available for Linux on ARM, isn't it?

Re: Raspberri PI Release Announcement

#196

Post by chrisrhoden »

learc83 wrote: post #11
handelaar wrote: post #7

And after they spent the past couple of weeks cockily batting away concerns about how they'd handle the traffic load, too. "You're all talking like we don't know what we're doing" is the line I recall being used several times.

They did seem to know what they were doing. They put up a temporary static site to handle the traffic. However, their suppliers, who are apparently fairly large companies, haven't been able to handle it. They said they warned them that the traffic would be enormous.

Imagine that you're one of these companies and someone says, "We have 5,000 units for you. We expect that they will sell out in a few hours if you limit them to one per customer."

Do you think that (a) they are being realistic about their customers or that (b) your servers will be unable to handle the load described by that scenario or (c) neither or (d) both?

Re: Raspberri PI Release Announcement

#198

Post by ajays »

freehunter wrote: post #189
adaml_623 wrote: post #185

Given the large amount of worry on this thread about getting one of the first 10000 I'm really looking forwards to seeing hundreds of blog posts and stories about people doing really interesting thing with their hard-fought purchases. I'm only being half sarcastic. I really would like to see people do cool things with these. And I will be disappointed if it turns out that 9500 of them end up in a drawer after the fir…

I would fear more that 9500 of them end up on eBay at $200 per unit until the next batch comes along. I really don't like people profiting from squatting.

Then the eBay buyers would post projects. Eventually the units (or most of them) will end up in the hands of a hacker, regardless of the route taken to get there.

Re: Raspberri PI Release Announcement

#199

Post by StavrosK »

cperciva wrote: post #152
StavrosK wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Don't they need proof of address in the US or anything? I might get me one, then. What's a good bank?

I'm very happy with Harris Bank -- but it's possible that being Canadian helped me there, since Harris is owned by a Canadian bank.

Hmm, apparently they don't have branches in NYC or LA/SF, which are the places I'm going... Thanks for the help, though!

Re: Raspberri PI Release Announcement

#200

Post by cperciva »

StavrosK wrote: post #199
cperciva wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very happy with Harris Bank -- but it's possible that being Canadian helped me there, since Harris is owned by a Canadian bank.

Hmm, apparently they don't have branches in NYC or LA/SF, which are the places I'm going... Thanks for the help, though!

Why do you care where they have branches? I've never been to one.
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