How is Raspberry Pi supported?

Mark,

There is no central support. If it has a hardware problem in that it is faulty, then you can ask the supplier (Farnel or RS) for a replacement or refund, governed by any particular retail laws in your area.

I would suggest that further research would have been in order *before* you bought this device, as at no point have I expected it to come shipped with an SD card and / or a working OS. No one forced you to spend more on an SD card than the Pi itself cost, why would you do this when it would not seem you have a clear idea of what it can do or even what it is. I have a 4 gig card for mine that cost £4.99.

Remember, you have paid around £24.99 for this and above it being a device unique at this price point, the Foundation are also charity. Expecting any sort of formal support against an SLA is pretty wide of the mark.

I would suggest you re-sell for a nice profit on e-bay and buy something that does what you want, with the support that you want.

View my posting as more of a philosophical discussion.  I shouldn't have said I *expected* the RPi to come with an SD card and a working OS, however, I am suggesting that it *should* do.  Don't get me wrong, I'm a very experienced developer here, but I'm thinking of all those people (and I'm sure there will be a lot) who will be in a similar situation to me and who are not experienced users, Linux gods or kernel hackers.

Let's look at the BBC Micro comparison for a moment.  The RPi wikipedia page reminds us that the RPi was inspired by the BBC Micro.  It links to this article:

http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/blog/cambridge-today-tony-quested/13664-raspberry-blown-at-cambridge-software-detractors

which confirms the BBC Micro inspiration and says it could inspire "millions of youngsters" to take up computer science.

Now let's look at the reality.  The BBC Micro worked out of the box.  The RPi doesn't.  The BBC Micro came with a ~300 page printed user guide with example programs and full instructions on how to connect up and fully utilise the computer.  The RPi comes with a link to a website where you can download a 2 page user guide.  The BBC Micro came with a working operating system, programming language, and some disks with demo programs and games to get you going.  The RPi has none of this.  The BBC Micro did not require you to own a computer already before you could make use of it.  The RPi does.  Because the BBC Micro was designed to work out of the box, if it didn't work you could send it back for a replacement.  The RPi doesn't work out of the box, so if you send it back, you won't get a replacement RPi that does a better job.

*I'm* not expecting any of this, at least not this early on in its life.  But, given all the articles that have been published about it and the expectations that have been set, I guarantee you there are going to be a lot of disappointed people who have been sent something they do not know how to use, and when they try to follow some simple instructions (i.e. buy an SD card) to then discover the SD card they bought is not going to work is going to be another black mark against the product.  As for inspiring "millions of youngsters", the unit will have to get a lot more accessible before it'll reach that sort of critical mass, and that might mean shipping it with a pre-loaded SD card and cables required for power and connectivity, and writing a decent User Guide.

p.s. *I* do have a clear idea of what the RPi can do and what it is, thanks.

Mark, You raise a lot of points that I don't disagree with at all, in fact the opposite, but your original post kind of obfuscated the more philosophical nature :-)

I have posted similar comments to yours elsewhere in the past, I also find the attitude on the Pi forums somewhat remiss, as anything less than praise gets the hackles up which is going to completely defeat the object of what this is all about. For it to be a success, and I hope that it is, people need to be honest about the (current) limitations.

The only thing I would say is that at its release, I think the BBC was £400, far above what my parents could afford so I never had one. I suspect that part of this cost reflected the support that was made available. Being firmly in the Sinclair camp, I made do with Sinclair User magazine and my local library. The Pi is being sold on a shoestring and it is early days yet, although I do also feel that you only get one chance to make a first impression and so far, with the hardware problems, ordering problems et al, it has not been a great start.

I beleive that the Foundation will be selling pre-loaded SD cards, and it looks like Farnell are gearing up to sell starter packs which will include an SD card.

My experience with my Pi has so far been reasonably positive, it is slower than I would like but not unexpectedly so. Had some problems with booting, but after updating to the newer debian image most things seem to have improved. Re-enabled SSH (pain that it was disabled IMHO) and loaded the quake binaries.

How much are the speed problems you mentioned down to the £4.99 SD card you purchased?

As far as I can tell, none at all.

I don't have speed problems per se, other than the fact that the Pi is a slow machine, but for £25 I didn't expect anything else and I also expect it to improve as time goes on. If I want fast I can use another computer, if I want 'fun to play around with' I can use the Pi. When it finally gets into volume production I can use it for 'Fun to play around with and not worried if it breaks' which is even better....

Mark,

You may want to take a gander at this before you purchase any more peripherals for your Pi, it may save you some frustration.

http://elinux.org/RaspberryPiBoardVerifiedPeripherals

I don't know about the US, but in the UK (and probably in all of Europe) consumer laws do not have an exclusion for products that are cheap, nor for products that are cool, hyped, and objects of fanboi worship.

All retail products are required to be of merchantable quality and to fulfil the function expected of them, and when they do not meet that standard then the purchaser is entitled to recourse in the form of replacement or reimbursement, at their discretion.  They are also entitled to some reasonable level of customer service or support, the minimum acceptable level being to provide the statutory replacement or reimbursement in a responsive manner.  The relevant expectation with the Pi is that it should boot and all its features should work, and the relevant "SLA" here is stated in the consumer laws, which are mandatory, not a magnanimous offer.

My advice to RS and to Premier Farnell alike is to reduce the opportunity for problems at the customer end by supplying as many Pi boards as possible with a small pre-programmed SD card that you have validated yourselves.  If you get the price of the card low enough, almost everyone with a modicum of commonsense will buy the Pi+SDcard bundle.  This saves them trouble and reduces your support costs simultaneously.

Support is very expensive because manpower is very expensive, and you can't afford to offer a lot of support on a $35 product.  Even replacement or reimbursement costs you money in support, so try to avoid the possibility of customers not being able to boot the device at all costs.

The wholesale cost to you of a 4GB (or even 2GB), old-tech SD card is so low that you might want to investigate the possibility of always supplying one as standard, for no other reason than to reduce the calls to support.

Morgaine.

Very useful Calvin, thanks!

Interesting that here:

http://elinux.org/RaspberryPiBoardVerifiedPeripherals#Problem_SD_Cards

...it suggests that problems with class 10 SDHC cards seems to be fixed and 'Further feedback will be useful.'  Prompts two questions from me:

1) Perhaps a stupid question, but how do I tell what "class" of card I have?

2) Further feedback to whom?  Looking at the history on the wiki page, none of the authors have their own pages, so wouldn't know how to contact them to provide any further feedback....

Regards,

Mark.

The Wikipedia article on SD cards shows symbols for card class.  I have some older cards that don't have any class (symbols), but I was able to see the C4 logo on the one I purchased for my RasPi-to-be.