size of first shipment

bit off topic, but you mentioned Nokia which piqued my interest (I'm a bitter N900 owner and former Mameo Linux user).  do you know of somewhere that talks more about that?

http://wiki.qt-project.org/QtonPi

I also have a Nokia Maemo device - N810

Used it as a Sat Nav until it tried to direct me through the middle of a supermarket. I had paid for 3 years map updates which never materialised.

Any suggestions as to what an old N810 could be used for - a touch screen/keyboard for a RPi?

Interesting question as I have a Maemo device too that I'm not sure what to do with now.  Touchscreen/keyboard role might work by using a bluetooth or wifi adapter on the Pi and the using some client in Maemo that talk to a server on the Pi.

Interesting point you make coder 27. Is there anyone else around here that can shed any light on this ? I've tried to find more info, but nothnig seems clear about the 8,000 that were floating around somewhere between here and China ?

Or have I missed some news ?

Replying to myself, is that a bad habit ? Anyway, I've posed the question over in the RasPi forums. Any significant information and I will post here too.

That's if I don't get banned for asking a difficult question...

Steve,  

Thanks for asking on the RasPi forum.  Judging by the responses you've gotten so far,

anyone who knows isn't saying, and anyone who's saying doesn't know.

That's the way it's been on this issue for a long time, which certainly raises suspicions.

I also asked here: http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-43262#comment-13325

It will be interesting to see if batch 2 has the EC mark silkscreened.

That would be a giveaway that the 8000 never existed.

One tidbit we heard yesterday is that RS sent out 2000 congratulatory emails in March

to those who were in the first batch.  But since only 700 units actually arrived in the first batch,

they have 1300 disappointed customers who now have to wait for the second batch. 

It isn't clear why they sent out 2000.  Maybe they forgot they would have to split the first batch,

or maybe they thought the first batch was more like 5000 units.  Mysteries abound.

Now I'm really confused.  Apparently yesterday Eben gave out some boards from the first batch to a school in Leeds -- http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17703852

Surely the entirety of the first batch (all 10k of them, not just 2k, nor only 700) was sold out to preorders, wasn't it?  How could Eben possibly have a bunch of them spare for the school?

Something's really bizarre about all this.  The numbers don't add up.

Morgaine,

  The numbers do add up.  See my original post in this thread.

The distributors were each allocated 700 of the first batch of 2000.

Eben kept about 150, 10% of which he handed out to the class,

and one of which ended up on eBay.

Well your numbers add up, but those aren't the numbers to which I'm referring.  I'm referring to the Foundation's numbers, which are that 10,000 had been made as batch #1, not merely ordered to be made.  And according to everything that's been said since the last week of February, those 10k were being assigned to preorders.  I guess that's not the case then.