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Raspberry Pi Now Has Distributors -- and Will Soon Have Boards for All (Video)
In an exclusive Transatlantic Skype conversation with Slashdot editor Timothy Lord recorded on Feb. 22, Raspberry Pi project leader Eben Upton talks about the state of Raspberry Pi, and tells us that yes -- finally -- they now have distributors in the U.S. and other countries instead trying to ship every unit from the U.K. Even better, instead of buying a batch of boards, selling them, and only then ordering another batch, the new distribution agreements mean they can keep a steady flow of orders coming in and going out. One slight downer is that people who have donated to the project may not get their Pi(s) right away; the distributors have spoken for all of the current order. Eben talks about this, and about how Raspberry Pi is going to take care of contributors, starting at about 4:15 in the video. You can also look at an in-person interview Tim did with Eben in January -- or wait until the end of today's video for a list of other Raspberry Pi videos.
Mind moving the cursor somewhere else, please?
Can you not activate videos unless and until I click 'Play'? Not everybody has unlimited broadband
Unfortunately it didn't really work out as planned. Farnell and RS was DDoSed a long time from 6 am to about 12. And there is still problems for people outside the UK to buy the rasp. I'm in Sweden and Farnells liks to the pre-order does not have Sweden in it's list. RS on the other hand requires a company to "express an interest in raspberry" (it says nothing about pre-order). So even now when the sites is working again I'm still unable to order a Rasp.
This makes me wonder why they didn't team up with a firm that is known globally and can handle traffic like e-bay or amazon?
Today I wanted a phase locked loop chip from Farnell. Could I get onto the site to look it up? No... Seems the world wants a router that's had it's wings clipped and a DVI port nailed to the top.
A scene in a living room in the Netherlands, just finishing my second cup of coffee...The Raspberrypi.org site displayed a cryptic message late yesterday which trigger a change notification email to me. This morning it has been down.
0700 CET, I hit refresh, again. Suddenly the raspberrypi.org site is alive again.
Huh, who are these Premier Farnell and RS Components companies? I'd expected these in the store on raspberry.com.
Ah well...
Farnell crashes in the first 90 seconds and stays down. RS has a few international sites that occasionally show signs of live. The Raspberry Pi is listed for 27,49 excluding tax. Including tax that $25-$35 computer suddenly sells for $42,50. Ah well.. oh, and 6 euros shipping ex tax. Hm, site crashes again. Hang on, they don't really want to deliver to consumers when an order is less than 50 euros.
Farnell has now been visited by some people and this company is at least as bad. In quite a few countries it seems not to do business with consumers at all.
At almost 1000 I finally manage to stay on a site long enough to actually click something into the basket. By then the feeble stocks have long been depleted.
What I wonder...
- why work with distributors who do NOT want to sell to private individuals?
- why work with consumers who are obviously unwilling or unable to handle a sizeable traffic load?
- Why such a small batch of boards in the first place?
Disappointing all around. I'm sure I'll get one sooner or later but I'm not going to pay a fortune for one.
This seems to have gotten lost in the commotion, but they also announced that the $25 Model A will be produced with the same amount of RAM as the $35 Model B (256 MB). Originally the Model A was only going to have 128 MB, so now the only difference is the Model B has an ethernet port. The Model A is going into production immediately.
Better known as 318230.
These guys have figured out how to get people to just GIFT them money to develop the product, which they can then sell at a huge profit, that they can keep for themselves.
They are a charity registered as such in England.
You can see their accounts (presented to the British Government) here: http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/CharityWithoutPartB.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=1129409&SubsidiaryNumber=0 (but it seems, as they have had a turnover of less than £10000 so far, they don't need to file detailed accounts).
The news here really isn't the retailers that have signed up, it is the fact that the distribution model has now changed. The retailers are licensing the board designs and handing their own manufacturing, which means that the 10,000 order limit and months lead time will disappear, since both were limitations of the Pi Foundation not having enough money in the bank to finance large scale manufacturing.
There is absolutely no reason why other manufacturers can't license the designs, e.g. Foxconn could license it, make it in their factories, and ship direct into their existing shipping channels. Chinese factories can turn this out and ship direct on ebay. If the Pi Foundation is now ready to license to everyone (I presume the licenses with Farnell and RS are not exclusive) this is going to end up making the Pi available more widely and more cheaply than they could ever have done with their direct manufacturing model.
Seriously, look at ARM or any of the other electronics design companies, and then tell me that licensed manufacturing isn't going to work better. This one change to the business model will increased their capacity from 10,000 units every 8 weeks or so, up to whatever is financially viable for third party licensers to invest. It means their manufacturing capabilty can scale to demand, instead of being limited by the fixed amount of money they have in the bank.
Those who donated to the project prior to completion have to wait for their boards while the folk who order direct get them shipped first?
Why don't you let the people who donated comment instead of putting words in their mouths? How about this hypothesis: many donors saw a charity with a good idea, one that they liked and wanted to support, and they saw their donation as exactly that and nothing more - there was no guarantee that they would be first in line, and they didn't expect that there would be any such guarantee in the future. They just wanted to show their support for a cool project that had little financial backing.
When you donate to a charity, do you always expect to get something in return? Is that how you think the world works for everyone?
Instead, they gave us company-orders only, minimum order amounts of €50, creditcard only and only to a select amount of countries.
I've just ordered mine as an individual (not a company) for ~£25 (less than €50) using a debit card.
Where raspberry pi is really failing at the moment is messaging. We were initially told that we could order internationally direct from the foundation. The post on the website says that you can buy them now from RS and Farnell, which would also be fine. While I think this is true for Farnell if you live in the UK, it isn't true for RS or Farnell if you live in the USA, so a lot of people feel like they've been deceived.
Furthermore, Farnell doesn't even seem to sell to USA consumers, and RS only has an "express an interest" site, and nothing on their USA site.
So, consumers are very confused about what is going on. Because of the inconsistent messaging, USA consumers have no idea if we'll ever be able to buy them online, at least without significant retail markup.
What I think would improve the goodwill would be for the Raspberry Pi team to:
1.) Contact RS and Farnell and figure out what the heck is going on, particularly for international customers. Put a post on the website to the effect that you're doing this.
2.) Once they do figure out what's going on, TELL US.
If, in two weeks time, when all the traffic has died down, international customers will be able to get them, that's fine, but people currently don't feel like that's the case. The two distributors are ruining Raspberry Pi's goodwill (which often happens when you give this power to someone else) but Raspberry Pi isn't compensating by over-communicating on their end.