How can I cancel my order?

The fact that another gadget comes out in roughly the same product space as the Pi isn't a very good reason for cancelling an order, in my view, unless there is significant monetary hardship --- in that instance, fair enough of course.  But unfortunate circumstances aside, the price of the Pi is not significantly more than that of a good meal in the "West", and it is probably less harmful to your liver than most nights out on the town, and certainly more educational.

Although there is no shortage of cheap Linux gadgets around, none of them inhabit exactly the same niche at the present time, ie. they're not real clones.  Each one has its own upsides and its own downsides, so it's extremely likely that good applications can be found to bring out the special advantages of each product.

The future will certainly be interesting for the Foundation though, as  new boards and ever-better SoCs come out in future months and years.  The Allwinner A10 is already somewhat old (it's a Cortex-A8, whereas the new buzz in the ARM world is all about Cortex-A9 MPcore, Cortex-A15 and 64-bit ARM), and the Pi's ARM1176 is positively Jurassic.

Needless to say, tech progress in the SoC world won't slow down to suit RPF and Broadcom, so they'll either have to respond or in time become a questionable proposition.  Currently they have no competition at all in their $25-$35 niche, but betting on nobody else appearing in this market sector would be foolhardy, in my opinion.

I sure hope that they're weighing up alternatives for the future, because Broadcom may not be able to move fast enough.  When I say "they", I mean Element 14 and RS.  The Foundation is probably tied to Broadcom, which could be their undoing.

Morgaine.

Morgaine,

  You seem to think that element14 wants to be in the computer manufacturing

business, and might develop and manufacture alternatives to the RPi.

But I don't see any evidence of such an interest. Their main business is

distributing other company's products, and it generally isn't considered to be

a good idea to try to compete with your partners.  From what I can tell, they

don't have a product manager for the RPi, and aren't focusing much if any

corporate attention on it, other than the minimum necessary to fulfull their

existing obligations to the foundation. 

  It will be interesting to see what happens under the new leadership which

takes over this Tuesday.

I am willing to wait.  This is an educational project.  I am looking forward to the development projects and reading about indivuals ingenuity.  I dont see alot of ports on othersaid device.  I hope this project can inspire others to get into electronics and engineering.  I am sure you can cancel your order.  If you cant, i will buy yours. + extra 5$ for shipping.

We can't really second-guess what Element 14 and RS will do in the future, and it probably changes constantly with management churn anyway.  But since they're in the manufacturing game at present, and  have always been so to some extent for engineering tools (especially RS who sell quite a bit of self-branded stuff), I think it's reasonable to assume that they'll remain doing what they're doing currently for the time being.

Unless it all goes pear-shaped that is.

We can't really second-guess them?   Really?   Sure we can.

If they were serious about making and selling both the current

RPi and some future derivatives, they would be doing things

quite a bit differently, I would think.  They would probably put

someone in charge.  That person would see that problems got

solved, either proactively or at least reactively.

If Fedora was their preferred OS, they wouldn't just pull it,

they would open some trouble tickets and follow up periodically. 

If there was a problem ordering the unit in countries such as Brazil,

they would get that resolved eventually.

If large numbers of customers were complaining that they didn't

have an estimated delivery date, they would get that resolved.

If newark.com was showing bogus availability dates, they would

get that resolved.  If customers were complaining that the

installation docs show a bogus password, they would get that

resolved. 

If customers were complaining that their TV's were getting fried,

their keyboards were repeating keys, their SD cards were not

working, etc., they would show some sort of interest.

If a larger ram chip was available, they would conduct a poll to

see what fraction of their potential customers would be willing

to pay to upgrade.

  but they don't.

Sounds familiar...a normal business then!

I suspect that they're mostly just sitting back and letting the Foundation run the show.  And meanwhile, the Foundation is in a combination of headless chicken and problem denial mode ... so the end result is not pretty.

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for your question, please can you send us a private message informing us which country you placed your order in so we can advise you the process of how to cancel your order

Farnell element14 Raspberry Pi Customer Support

i also need help cancelling my order

Thank you for taking time to answer to me.

I changed my mind and didn't want to cancel.

I received the order with the element14 T-shirt

thank you :-)