Did any businesscards at "embedded world" make it into the queue?

Peter, Given the problems that the Nokia and Seneca people have had getting their Pi's, I expect the chances of getting anything more than marketing literature is unlikely.

Whilst I don't think sales will drop to anything near zero towards the end of the year, I do think sales will drop off and ebay prices will come down sharply from the original prices, mainly due as you say to people buying them, being unable to do anything they were made to think they could, and then just getting rid of it.

If people are looking at the RasPi forums they will also see numerous problems with power supply and SD cards, which I think could well put people off of buying them that are expecting something that just works.

There is also the question of increased competition from the far east, already some devices are available from DealExtreme and Intel are also wading in with their Next Unit of Computing.

I do think the future of the Pi could not be as rosy as I first thought and hoped but I will be happy to be proved wrong.

Oh, I'd say it will be what it really is: A useful and affordable piece of hardware for the ones knowing how to deal with small computers and the usual amount of hardware bugs and still sort of a mystery for the ones who don't. I am still positive it will be able to fullfill the foundation's initial goals to serve as a decent educational tool - as soon as the distribution is working in a reliable way. So the question is what a rosy future is for the Pi. Maybe it has to be what it was made for instead of beeing what the hype did want it to be.

Personally I am not happy about the whole chaos which made me wait for so many months without knowing what's really going on (the whole buzz here in the forum didn't clarify things too much ;-) but I'd say my expectations about the Pi as a piece of hardware are too realistic to be really dissapointed. Somehow the whole hype wasn't helpful at all... I'm sure I'll get what I wanted to get, but it will be a whole year later than I planned.

Anyway, I am in the lucky position to be working at a place where comparable hardware is around so I wasn't exactly bored to death during the last months. And there's other stuff for having fun during my spare time too. I just got a starter kit of tinkerforge on saturday - should keep me busy for some time

Regards

    Peter

I also think the Pi's future is uncertain, despite the foundation end goals and noble cause, as soon as somebody figures how to run a decen distro in a box like the Roku2 the Pi is out of the picture. I still believe that the $25 linux box motto is misleading, as is, you can do nothing with it for that money.

For $10 extra I'd prefer to keep the connectivity option and extra USB port.

-J

I know countries where $10 are definitely something to think about. Some projects I want to try out at the Pi might be suitable for such cases. And when you buy 1000 Boards it's suddenly $10000. That's most likely something schools even in Europe definitely have to take into account (pun partly intended ;-) . Therefore I guess the model A has got a market of it's own. Of course, as a Swiss only "needing" a few boards (and even those are mainly for fun) model B is the one I'll buy.

BTW: The final price including shipping and taxes is still OK, but quite far from $35, isn't it? :->

Regards

    Peter

No doubt that in some places and when you talk volume every cent counts.

Yes final price is far from $25 or $35 when you add everything you need to make it work. I guess that at some moment after the initial rush and hype evaporates the distrubutors may be able to offer some volume discounts.

Hype and extreme PR appart, if there is a real volume market for something like this IMHO the approach should be different.

But it is just my opinion.

-J

I got the order invitation yesterday in the evening. To the e-mail-address I put into the online form at element 14 several weeks after the embedded world. So I can say that the standard process works, but all the non-standard stuff doesn't. The businesscard got into the "general marketing"-pot and the online form into the "Raspberry Pi interested" pot. I guess this was it in most cases.

Anyway, I might get a Raspi in august from Farnell. I'll take it whenever they send it. First I thought it might be unfair to order 2 now but I did promise to give one to my brother as a christmas gift (christmas 2011 BTW) so I can definitely say I ordered one per person now. The third one I have to get for the company still is nowhere, though. Anyway, eBay shows me that about everybody ordered at both suppliers and most of them did it months before me (and quite many did it *only* to make a big profit at eBay and not to use it themselves).

Regards

    Peter

I think you can order more than one now. Actually when I placed my order on Feb 29 I put two instead of one and element14 send

first one on 5/25 and the second one on 6/5, both via UPS ground (US).

Interesting thing, the first board to arrive looks like from the 2nd batch of pcbs, it has the CE and FCC logos on the bottom silk screen,

the second board looks like from some other batch (first one?), it has a CE legend on the top silk screen but two stickers with the

CE and FCC logos on the bottom.

-J