It's a nice piece of kit - I knew Eben from Cambridge, before he got the job with Broadcom who make the SoC behind it all - though my Farnell order showed a two month lead time in the paperwork! (Probably just coincidence, but the Element14 branding has a nice resonance too - that being the name ARM's original parent company took on before becoming part of Broadcom.)
One caveat which didn't seem obvious is that it needs 700 mA on the USB port, rather than the standard 500 mA - it looks as if Farnell have suitable supplies very cheaply though, or the newest iPhone/iPad chargers or a USB port on the newer MacBook Pros would also do.
While typing this, an order update came in from Farnell indicating "estimated delivery: w/c 14/5/12", so we will have a while in which to find something suitable!
I'm quite impressed how the launch reduced both Farnell and RS's web servers to smoking ruins within seconds. From Eben's original starting point of "could we get enough people interested to justify ordering a production batch" to "how on earth do we cope with demand" and taking on full-time staff to cope!
Funnily enough, my mother clicked the 'raspberry pi' link just after reading Toby's mention of the new Indian restaurant, then complained she couldn't find the pie...
It should make quite a good media system, streaming audio and video to the TV; of course, it's the same processor family and comparable horsepower to the Apple TV, with the 1080p output. Not quite up to firewall duty - the single network port's going to be slower than my cable modem connection once Virgin's current upgrade rollout reaches Perth - but perhaps useful for other things in that line.
The only order figures I've seen so far were that one of the two distributor websites collapsed under 700 enquiries per second, and that one of them has a 55,000 order backlog for the Asia/Pacific region.
An unexpected parallel really: the original BBC Micro follow was supposed to sell 12,000 units and ended up selling 1.5 million; Raspberry Pi aimed for a batch of 10,000, and breaking the million barrier doesn't seem at all implausible now. Of course, being 30-40 times cheaper probably helps there!
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Nice item
One caveat which didn't seem obvious is that it needs 700 mA on the USB port, rather than the standard 500 mA - it looks as if Farnell have suitable supplies very cheaply though, or the newest iPhone/iPad chargers or a USB port on the newer MacBook Pros would also do.
While typing this, an order update came in from Farnell indicating "estimated delivery: w/c 14/5/12", so we will have a while in which to find something suitable!
I'm quite impressed how the launch reduced both Farnell and RS's web servers to smoking ruins within seconds. From Eben's original starting point of "could we get enough people interested to justify ordering a production batch" to "how on earth do we cope with demand" and taking on full-time staff to cope!
Re: Nice item
Have you plans for what you’ll do with it?
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Raspberry Ripple
It should make quite a good media system, streaming audio and video to the TV; of course, it's the same processor family and comparable horsepower to the Apple TV, with the 1080p output. Not quite up to firewall duty - the single network port's going to be slower than my cable modem connection once Virgin's current upgrade rollout reaches Perth - but perhaps useful for other things in that line.
The only order figures I've seen so far were that one of the two distributor websites collapsed under 700 enquiries per second, and that one of them has a 55,000 order backlog for the Asia/Pacific region.
An unexpected parallel really: the original BBC Micro follow was supposed to sell 12,000 units and ended up selling 1.5 million; Raspberry Pi aimed for a batch of 10,000, and breaking the million barrier doesn't seem at all implausible now. Of course, being 30-40 times cheaper probably helps there!
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Have an old LaCie Mac mini sized hard drive enclosure I am planning to drop it into for the time being.