Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Raspberry Pi Has Gone To Manufacturing

Posted by Soulskill on from the bake-until-golden-brown dept.

alecclews writes "After weeks of waiting, the Raspberry Pi foundation, who are creating a $25 computer to bootstrap computing education, has flipped the switch on manufacturing. They had wanted to build the board in the UK but it turns out to be uneconomic."

6 of 374 comments (clear)

  1. Not vapourware! by isCreeper($('Ssss')) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After all of the accusations of vapourware, it's nice that they're actually making these.

    1. Re:Not vapourware! by hawguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Even if you did create a $25 x86 computer that could run Windows, you'd have to add $100 for the Windows License.

    2. Re:Not vapourware! by sunderland56 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Whether it is "vapor" or not, if they are still going to ship with only Lin-sux and no proper OS (Windows or OS X) support, then the project is going to nose dive anyway.

      Of all the computers that handled your message between your own computer and the slashdot servers, how many were running what you call a "proper OS"?

      I bet that even the router in your own house doesn't run Windows.

  2. Worrying state of affairs by Nemyst · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reading the post (I really suggest everyone does so, it's an enlightening read), I have to say this sounds particularly worrying. The government and local manufacturers almost seemed intent on stopping them from doing the work locally. Does that even make sense?

    I can understand higher costs; the West won't accept salaries below a certain threshold, there's unions, and I entirely respect that. However, the schedule problem is ridiculous. A plant thousands of kilometers away from your main sales point can be faster to ramp up production than the shop down the street? We're not speaking about a small-scale project, either! I find this utterly unbelieveable. No wonder so much of the manufacturing goes overseas.

    And then the taxing part is plain and simply dumb. You can't control corporations, but that the government actively deters local production? That's like shooting yourself in the foot and wondering why it hurts.

    The UK and the West as a whole (I'm entirely sure that the UK is not a special case here) should be ashamed.

  3. Re:Is this really a big deal? by fotbr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For quick hack-it-together devices, I'd rather have a cheap linux computer with some gpio pins that I can access via something like /dev/port0 than an arduino. I'm not sure that this Raspberry Pi is the perfect solution to that, but it's closer to what I want than a arduino is, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to deal with than hacking something together out of an old laptop or mini-itx board.

    If I'm going to go back to playing with microcontrollers, I'm going to be working from a bare chip, custom boards, and assembly language, because to me, that was fun.

    Arduinos have their place. This thing has its place. There might be some overlap, but there's a lot of situations where you'd pick one over the other. Choice is good, right?

  4. Re:Is this really a big deal? by sjames · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you have kids, I'll bet you'd be more willing to let them take a soldering iron to a $25 machine than a $250 machine.