Raspberry Pi Stock

Hi frednginger,

I'm not aware of any specific timeframe, but we are working very closely with Raspberry Pi to ensure we can meet the demand as soon as possible. If you haven’t been able to pre-order, register your interest so we can let you know as soon as you can order again and keep you updated with the latest on availability. 

In the meantime, we hope that you find element14 Community a fun place to hangout and talk about Raspberry Pi with your fellow enthusiasts!

Thanks!

Nicole, element14 Community Manager

I understand that therre has been huge demand for the Pi but, along with many others, I expressed interest through Pi's own site last year and feel quite let down - it's as if we've been brushed aside by the tide of media hype. Petulent I know but I'm just being honest. Having got that off my chest, I appreciate it isn't the fault of Element14.

The main reason I have followed the progress of the Raspberry Pi for all this time is that I could see the potential as a teaching tool. I teach computing to 16-19 year olds (technical support and developers) and wanted to purchase class sets for my students to use. Correct me if I'm wrong but, I understood that teaching in schools and colleges was one of the main reasons for developing them? It appears that most of the stocks have been sold in a media stampede in single units. So what about schools and colleges? Is there a separate arena for those of us in education to buy Pis for teaching? With the government push for young people to develop skills such as programming and app development, I would have thought that some priority would have been given to education.

Are you sure you have been following this?

This first release is aimed at geeks and nerds. The Pi has no casing, there is little or no documentation and even the people producing the operating systems are just about one page ahead of the rest of us.

The idea is that developers will have a really good thrash at working out what the Pi can do, producing, documentation, guides, etc, so that later in the year a proper education release can be made.

i know the Pi site is down at the moment but when it is back have a look on the forum at the education section.

Even though www.raspberrypi.org is currently suspended, you can get a lot of information about educational plans at the Wiki: http://elinux.org/RaspberryPiBoard and http://elinux.org/Rpi_Education.  This is mostly work in progress and work planned, but there is a lot of enthusiasm and motivation for educational applications.

I have been following but I don't recall reading about geeks and nerds being the primary target for sales... But then I have focussed on reading the blurb about schools and education which, as I said, was the reason behind the development. Being something of a geek myself, I do understand the desire to get my hands on a new "toy" and then talk enthusiastically about what we've done with it, but there's a shortage of young programmers out there and we desperately need to get them started on the road to employment in engineering and technology. After all, the future of these industries is, in my opinion more important than our hobbies. Having said that, I do take your point about enthusiasts using the the first run of Pis to develop the technology. It may have been a good idea to reserve some so  that teachers of technology could have experimented a little before buying them for the classroom. Of course I have a significant bias in this area but then the future of industry is important.

These are just my thoughts and opinions. Feel free to disagree or agree - contructive discussion is good .

I have been following but I don't recall reading about geeks and nerds being the primary target for sales... But then I have focussed on reading the blurb about schools and education which, as I said, was the reason behind the development. Being something of a geek myself, I do understand the desire to get my hands on a new "toy" and then talk enthusiastically about what we've done with it, but there's a shortage of young programmers out there and we desperately need to get them started on the road to employment in engineering and technology. After all, the future of these industries is, in my opinion more important than our hobbies. Having said that, I do take your point about enthusiasts using the the first run of Pis to develop the technology. It may have been a good idea to reserve some so  that teachers of technology could have experimented a little before buying them for the classroom. Of course I have a significant bias in this area but then the future of industry is important.

These are just my thoughts and opinions. Feel free to disagree or agree - contructive discussion is good .

The Pi site and forum is up again so you can go and have a look. As initial stocks are limited the need was for the developer/hobbyist/enthusiast/educational community to get their hands on the Pi rather than the intended end user, the pupil. For months they have been trying to get the media interested and been trying to drum up interest. The genie is, however, now out of the bag, and in recent weeks they have been firefighting just to keep their heads above water. From a small project aimed at British schools, there is now interest from all over the world, which is great, but will inevitably make supply an issue in the short term.

Agreed, I don't think it took the powers of psychic Sally to see that this was going to be big. By their own admission, the mailing list had 100,00 subscribers, many of which it would appear weren't mailed anyway, because it takes a week to personalise that number of mails (Really?). I have been following the foundation for several months now and on several occasions, naysayers about their model were assured that 'they were not business noobs'. I don't think this launch and the stock problems can be taken as an unqualified success, so perhaps the naysayers were not entirely wrong.