Raspberry Pi Gets 512MB Filling

sfcrazy writes "Good (and bad) news for Raspberry Pi lovers, the Model B has been upgraded to 512MB RAM from 256MB. Bad news is for those who already got their Model B shipments because all those who have outstanding orders with either distributors will get the *upgraded* version of the device, means with 512MB RAM instead of 256MB. The upgraded devices should be arriving to customers from today onwards. Raspberry Pi team will be pushing a firmware upgrade soon so these news devices can detect and use the additional RAM."

Comments

"Bad news"

[Bronster]

That's what happens when you adopt early, you get earlier revisions of stuff.

The alternative would be to never upgrade for fear of making the early adopters sad. Of course there has to be a balance, but most non-assholes accept that this is how things work.

On the plus side, they actually HAVE their Pi now, and have had the use of it already. If they hadn't bought it (collectively), there would be no Pi.

Mmm, Pi.

Re:"Bad news"

[mfh]

That's what happens when you adopt early, you get earlier revisions of stuff.

Early adopters get a rare slice of history. Nothing wrong with that.

Re:"Bad news"

[Anonymous Coward]

@ $35, it's not even an issue. buy a second one! wooo.

Re:"Bad news"

[Crosshair84]

Just like with SSDs, early ones were still faster than spinning rust, but horrifically unreliable. If you were someone who wanted the bleeding edge you still bought them, but for people who value reliability, we waited for the later models to come out.

I know I said in the past that I would buy one when Western Digital started making them, but the fact that Intel has a 5 year warranty on their SSDs now for awhile and the specs of the new 520 series I went ahead and got one. Combine that with finally listening to hairyfeet and switching from Firefox to Comodo Dragon, I've seen a nice speed boost. (That and now there are Chrome equivalents to my favorite plugins.)

Re:"Bad news"

[Anonymous Coward]

No bad news about it. 16 years ago I spent a stupid amount of money on a PC with far less memory than the Pi. Computers get better and cheaper, that is the way of things.
I ordered a Pi with 256MB and got what I ordered, and am happy.

Re:"Bad news"

[decipher_saint]

Hmm, I guess the alternative is to wait until just before the end of time to buy all your devices.

(but you just know they have better devices in a parallel universe anyway)

Re:"Bad news"

[kelemvor4]

@ $50, it's not even an issue. buy a second one! wooo.

FTFY. Although at this point, I didn't really buy a pi, I loaned them 50 bucks.

Re:"Bad news"

[inasity_rules]

I have my slice of Pi. And I am quite satisfied with 256Mb. I have plans for the little beast that don't require more RAM.... So I am happy. I liked the idea of a cheap limited computer. It makes you frugal with your resources and efficient. But then again if my ZX81 still worked, I'd be playing with that...

Re:"Bad news"

[kriston]

I haven't had a need to use more than the 256 megabytes it comes with but I will probably order another upgraded version anyway.

Re:"Bad news"

[cjjjer]

Why would you want to run Linux on <insert_device_name_here>, people love to hack things, it's how we learn and keep amused.

Re:"Bad news"

[MightyYar]

I know I said in the past that I would buy one when Western Digital started making them

I know, I'm waiting for Boeing to start making automobiles. Toyotas just aren't reliable enough ;p

Sorry, I just couldn't resist. I personally think you are better off with an Intel SSD, since intel has experience with chips. WD might know how to make a good spinning disk, but AFAIK they don't own a single chip fab.

Re:"Bad news"

[drinkypoo]

On the down side, I'm kind of pissed that I have a device that will now be relegated to second-tier status, because everyone and their mom will end up planning for a 512MB memory envelope.

On the even further down side, they will almost certainly target Android to use that much memory, and those of us with a Rev.A will have a nightmare of a time.

On the even further down side, you still can't get ICS, which they claimed to have working two months ago. WTF?

Finally, for the same actual delivered price, you can get something else. For barely more you can get a VIA APC from Newegg. For the same price, you can get one of these sticks that run ICS.

Raspberry Pi has turned out to be kind of a comedy of incompetence, and I now regret buying one. Between the ethernet jack and the usb polyfuses and the low memory and the lack of forthcomingness I feel like I might as well have just bought a finished commercial device and saved myself a lot of trouble. This is what I get for being impatient. They've talked a lot about how "Open" they are but they don't even seem to be able to release the updated blob to make ICS work, they won't tell us when or even any kind of detail on why, the memory upgrade had to be coming but they didn't want people to wait so they didn't tell us. And then there's how pathetic the shippers have been, claiming they have them in stock when they aren't even fulfilling orders themselves, promising air shipping for the price of ground and then shipping them ground anyway, etc.

Re:"Bad news"

[msauve]

"I guess the alternative is to wait until just before the end of time to buy all your devices."

Even better, if you're buying at the end of time, pay with credit!

Re:"Bad news"

[Gaygirlie]

The reason they were able to upgrade the Pi to 512MB is exactly because the 256MB - version was so popular. If there had not been such demand there still wouldn't be 512MB - version. So basically, you're annoyed because it is popular and therefore managed to get a discount -- rather illogical from your part.

Re:"Bad news"

[Gaygirlie]

Finally, for the same actual delivered price, you can get something else. For barely more you can get a VIA APC from Newegg. For the same price, you can get one of these sticks that run ICS.

You do realize that those do not offer the same kind of modifiability as the RPi? The VIA APC has very few extra ports and the sticks have literally none. In other words, they cater to entirely different audience and if you bought an RPi but actually wanted a VIA APC or similar then you hadn't really thought about what you actually want. Yes, it is sad that the RPi doesn't seem to suit you, but blaming them for that is just shifting blame for your bad purchase from yourself.

the memory upgrade had to be coming but they didn't want people to wait so they didn't tell us.

I quite doubt it's like that. Most likely they couldn't secure a deal for larger memory chips at the same price because the manufacturer of those chips wasn't convinced that there'd be enough demand for the RPi. Now that the demand has been proven the deal could be closed. It's just basic business practices, mate.

Re:"Bad news"

[xaxa]

My my, what a great big sense of entitlement you have!

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a registered charity, created to improve computer science education in schools. Much of the work has been done by volunteers.

If you don't want your board, sell it on eBay. They seem to have held their value so far.

Re:"Bad news"

[Laxori666]

I think the notion of 'credit' will become more and more obsolete as the end of time approaches.

Re:"Bad news"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That's what happens when you adopt early, you get earlier revisions of stuff.

That's why I'm waiting for the fastest and bestest computer anyone will ever build! By the way, is there any schedule for when they're gonna build it?

Re:"Bad news"

[Crosshair84]

Ummmmmm, your analogy is a non sequitur. Boeing has never made cars. Western digital does make storage devices, so getting into SSD would be a logical step for them. You example would be logically coherent if you replaced "car" with "single engine prop planes", but even that's a stretch since SSDs are a growing market share while single engine prop planes are a rather mature market.

Nvidia doesn't own a single chip fab either, what does that have to do with anything?

Re:"Bad news"

[MightyYar]

Boeing makes a reliable way to get from point A to point B.

Aren't you taking a joke a bit too seriously?

Nvidia doesn't own a single chip fab either, what does that have to do with anything?

Nvidia at least designs their own graphics chips. If WD has any chip design experience at all, it is in their drive controller. And I'm sure some of that experience applies to SSDs, but they have no memory chip experience at all.

Re:"Bad news"

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Re: Intel 520's

I've been buying them and sticking them into the SAS slots on HP DL360/DL380 servers. They snap right in. I bought about 25% more than I need in case there are any failures and will proactively rotate them out for newer/larger ones in a year.

Very fast.

Re:"Bad news"

[Dishevel]

Everybody STOP!
Do not improve anything. AC just bought something and we must respect his feelings in this matter.

Re:"Bad news"

[Gaygirlie]

It's not 1994 anymore, ram is dirt cheap. Putting in 512mb from the start SHOULD have been obvious at the design meeting, would not have added significant cost, and would not have fragmented the software base, as now there will be different version for stuff with differing amounts of ram.

The manufacturers weren't convinced there'd be enough demand for the Pi and therefore getting a deal for 512MB chips would indeed have increased the price of the device quite a bit. Also, your argument is like saying that they should never ever do upgraded versions of anything whatsoever because -- gee whiz! -- there will be new versions of stuff to make use of new possibilities!

Re:"Bad news"

[Erbo]

Why "bad news"? This is an excellent opportunity to get a second one...and give the original to someone who would appreciate it as a Christmas gift. Which is what I plan on doing...and it means ModMyPi will be getting more business, too, as I get another case for the new one.

Re:"Bad news"

[Narishma]

It's not 1994 anymore, ram is dirt cheap.

Only some types of RAM.

Re:"Bad news"

[Ginger Unicorn]

In keeping with the BBC Micro inspired naming scheme, they should have just called them the B+

The BBC model B+ was basically a B with twice as much RAM.

Re:"Bad news"

[Crosshair84]

The manufacturers weren't convinced there'd be enough demand for the Pi and therefore getting a deal for 512MB chips would indeed have increased the price of the device quite a bit.

I was not aware of this, do you have a link elaborating on that? Given that the VIA APC has 512 of ram and almost the same price I am slightly skeptical of this claim.

Also, your argument is like saying that they should never ever do upgraded versions of anything whatsoever because -- gee whiz! -- there will be new versions of stuff to make use of new possibilities!

No it is not like that at all. There IS such a thing as reving your product so often that nobody wants it, see Desktop Linux for proof of this. With a constantly shifting baseline, a good base of stable well developed software cannot be created because developers are constantly redeveloping for the new baseline. If the Pi was out for 2 years before the 512 came out, that would be one thing, but reving the baseline so drastically mere months after the initial hardware shipped is not smart when you are trying to get your new product established.

Come to think of it, hasn't Microsoft gotten a TON of flack for doing the exact same thing for WinPhone7? Depreciating the old version by reving the baseline to a new version just as the old version was starting to establish itself?

Re:"Bad news"

[Anonymous Coward]

PC-style RAM with dozens of small chips are cheap. One large package-on-package RAM chip is not cheap, especially in small quantities. You can't even buy 1 gig POP chips without being a major manufacturer. I imagine the switch to Sony's UK plant was key in getting quantity discounts.

If it was solely a matter of dropping in a new stick instead of having a single chip soldered directly to the CPU, we wouldn't even be discussing this.

Re:"Bad news"

[Gaygirlie]

I was not aware of this, do you have a link elaborating on that? Given that the VIA APC has 512 of ram and almost the same price I am slightly skeptical of this claim.

Well, comparing VIA to the foundation behind the Pi is quite unfair as VIA is a large, established manufacturer with plants of their own; of course they can get deals with other manufacturers much more easily than a completely new entity that has no track record whatsoever and a questionable amount of financial resources to back up a deal with. Also, in VIA's case they themselves manufacture their own boards, the CPU, many of the connectors and so on, meaning that they can squeeze just that much more out of the price.

Re:"Bad news"

[Gaygirlie]

Ummmmmm, your analogy is a non sequitur. Boeing has never made cars. Western digital does make storage devices, so getting into SSD would be a logical step for them.

I don't feel it's actually that big of a stretch. Western Digital is and never has been a player in the flash-storage market, they've always been a player in the mechanical storage - market, just Boeing has always been about transporting people through the air instead of on the ground. Boeing does have experience with developing lightweight, sturdy structures with passenger safety and aerodynamics/fuel efficiency in mind just as WD has experience with error-correction, data usage patterns and such details; it'd be a new area for both, but not that far from what they already do.

Re:"Bad news"

[tepples]

My point is that some people have legitimate reasons to run Windows, such as Windows-exclusive business-critical applications.

Re:"Bad news"

[Crosshair84]

Why exactly could they supposedly get the 256mb chips so easily as to make a $35 machine, but 512 would suddenly be a monumental hurdle? If you can get a deal one one, why not the other?

I am still interested in the assertion of 256 being chosen, because of problems getting bulk deals, being backed up. Perhaps a link to a forum discussion or something elaborating on why certain choices were made? I'd love to see the reasoning behind some of the design choices.

Re:"Bad news"

[Crosshair84]

Well what type of ram does it use and how expensive is it vs other types in common use today?

Re:"Bad news"

[Anonymous Coward]

I was trolling, comment #41657069 was written by a complete moron so I replied like he did. Obviously both OSes would have their respective uses on the Pi depending on your project.

Re:"Bad news"

[Crosshair84]

Finally, an actual explanation, thank you.

The next question then is why did they chose to use a POP chip if there would be such difficulty in acquiring them. I would assume that a POP design would allow things to be more compact while using cheaper, lower density chips would have decreased the costs of chips, might have increased the price of construction in other ways. I suppose the use of laptop memory was probably considered at some point and rejected for some reason.

Just trying to get a grasp of why they made the design choices they did. There could have been good reasons for doing what they did, but until I know those reasons I can only go by what I can see.

Re:"Bad news"

[psergiu]

Using the PoP memory means that the RPi doesn't need PCB traces from the CPU to a memory socket which results in:
- Smaller PCB without a RAM socket
- Fewer layers in the PCB
==> Cheaper.

Re:"Bad news"

[Belial6]

I'm going to have to agree with you on the too frequent of revisions issue. This is the third revision of the board in less than a year. If they were going to up the memory, they should have done it at the same time that they changed the motherboard layout.

At $35, you can do a lot more revisions than on a $100 or more device, as price is not really an issue. As you say, it is compatibility that is an issue with too many revisions. If the Pi Foundation were smart, they would shoot for a revision once a year, and roll all of their changes into those revisions. I would happily buy 1 or 2 new Pi's a year that had noticeable improvements.

The biggest problem here is that they don't seem to have a really good way to identify by sight which Pi you have, or which Pi you will get if you order one. They need to have clearly stated and marked revision numbers on the boards.

Re:"Bad news"

[ballpoint]

But then again if my ZX81 still worked, I'd be playing with that...

Mine still does, but I'm bored with it since I've tried out all 256**1024 possible programs.

Re:"Bad news"

[Narishma]

It uses LPDDR2 RAM in a Package-On-Package format where it sits on top of the SoC. The SoC only supports up to 512 MB of RAM, so if you want more you'll have to redesign the board and use a different SoC.

Re:"Bad news"

[inasity_rules]

And all possible input combinations...?

Re:"Bad news"

[partyguerrilla]

Why wouldn't it "run" facebook? Are you trying to piss me off?

Re:"Bad news"

[Anonymous Coward]

Early adopters get crappy stuff, the Pi is defective: USB doesn't work properly, the SD card driver hogs the cpu, the board was revised because of some big flaws. The worst is, USB will very probably never work alright due to defects in the USB IP in the processor and a terrible kernel driver for it. Try to do anything even remotely meaningful with the Pi and you'll be hitting a brick wall.

See:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=11529
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=5249
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=7866
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=12097
http://www.element14.com/community/thread/19573?tstart=30

And there's more: several people have been banned for stating the Pi is defective in several forum threads. Apparently this foundation enjoys behaving like a big bully. First the fanboys come and bully the person who complains (it can't be... that's not really a problem... what do you expect for a few bucks), then the moderators come and look for excuses to ban him/her.

I've sold my Pi on eBay for more than it cost me (yeah, for real), and you should too.

Re:"Bad news"

[MightyYar]

you appeared to be making fun of what my standards for accepting SSDs for use in my own machines

Correct. I consider WD's bread and butter to be making an entirely different product. While it is possible that their SSDs will be great, I'd put my own money on a chipmaker (as you did with Intel).

I thought the analogy was pretty decent. Two ways to travel with different underlying technologies versus two ways to store data with different underlying technologies.

and that is the part that seems to have given SSD users such headaches in the past.

Agreed. The drive controller is probably pretty hard to get right. But in the case of Intel, some of their products use a chip by LSI's Sandforce, who make nothing except SSD controllers.

Apple didn't have any cell phone experience either, that didn't seem to stop them.

That's an excellent point, but let me ask you - would you have taken that bet? I sure would not have. Maybe WD will rock the world with a really superior iSSD, but I'm not going to bet on it. And as you say, the do seem to be betting on their bread-and-butter. The weird thing is that they inherited an SSD joint venture of some kind with Intel when they bought Hitachi.

Re:"Bad news"

[freman]

I feel like an apple user happy with incremental updates (only they pay $700 odd, I only paid $42)... but I'll have an original, an original with mounting holes, and now a 512 meg version... What'll you give me for the complete set? :P

Re:"Bad news"

[icebraining]

Since they probably haven't ported them to ARM either, running Windows on the RPi would be rather useless for that purpose.

Re:"Bad news"

[dbIII]

Raspberry Pi has turned out to be kind of a comedy of incompetence

Welcome to version 0.1 of anything new.

Re:"Bad news"

[wigyori]

If early adopter wouldn't mean a 3-4 months delay in this case.

Re:"Bad news"

[Douglas Goodall]

Call me when it can take out the trash.

Re:"Bad news"

[Gen_Music]

Did you miss the part where he said chips? Or did you just not know that SSD's are completely, absolutely, intrinsically different technologies to mechanical disks and the technology inside an SSD is far more akin to a Intel Processor or the the Unified Shaders in a Graphics card than they are like mechanical disks. WD's chips (for SATA busses attached to their drives and such) are made by third parties, so WD themselves don't make any chips. Whereas whether SLC or MLC all SSD's are just arrays upon arrays of chips.

Re:"Bad news"

[Gen_Music]

Jesus Christ, are there really this many Slashdotters that have never heard of Economies of Scale? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale Put simply, if you will be ordering more, then the price per item is cheaper. At the start of the Pi's manufacturing, nobody know how much it would sell so every single part in the Pi cost more as they couldn't order in bulk. As more sold and they realised they could, the prices of every single part came down as they were able to buy in bigger batches, that is why 512MB is all of a sudden affordable, because not only is the RAM itself cheaper in bigger batches, so is every other part in the Pi and that contributes greatly to fitting 512MB into the $30 BOM area. (Assuming $5 for execs, admin and profits, which would be very little)

Bring on the Android Pi

[judgecorp]

One exciting thing is the Pi can now run the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android... http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/raspberry-pi-512mb-ram-96143

Re:Bring on the Android Pi

[CastrTroy]

I'm going to go with the AC sibling of mine. Android to me is a terrible operating system, I don't know enough about it to know whether it's better in newer versions (jellybean etc) or whether it's something specific to my phone and the phones I've seen, but Android isn't my idea of a good OS. I would much rather run Linux on the Raspberry Pi, and don't care to run Android. I only have an Android phone because there really isn't a whole lot else out there. iPhone is nice but expensive. Windows Phone is almost non existent. Nokia (symbian) had some really nice phones but there are almost no apps available. Don't even get me started on BlackBerry. The entire phone ecosystem is actually pretty terrible as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Bring on the Android Pi

[Lifyre]

I suspect it is your phone mostly. The biggest problem Android has is that there is a huge quality range from phone to phone and manufacturer to manufacturer. The software and modifications that HTC, Motorola, and Samsung force on Android users are horrendous and lead to some absolutely horrible experiences with worse performance.

If you use the Android that Google releases (or something close to it, like Asus) there is a world of difference and (to me) a superior experience to iOS.

Re:Bring on the Android Pi

[jjmcwill]

This behavior by the phone makers has had perplexed me for some time now.

Can't they see how bad they're making the phones when they pile on all these crappy mods?

Re:Bring on the Android Pi

[evilviper]

the Pi can now run the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android

Except the Pi shipped with an ARM11 (ARMv6) CPU, while just about all native Android apps are compiled for ARMv7. So most of the apps people are going to want to run... Multimedia programs, games, Firefox, etc., etc, won't ever work on the Pi, all for the sake of saving $1 rather than upgrading to a non-ancient CPU.

Re:Bring on the Android Pi

[SimonTheSoundMan]

PC manufacturers have done this for years and have never learnt either.

Nothing better than a brand new PC that take 2 minutes to boot then 3 minutes for the HDD to settle down after login followed by a ton of nagware, reformat and reinstall and choose not to install he bloatware and the PC takes 40 seconds to boot and no HDD activity after a couple of seconds after login.

Good site for Raspberry Pi hardware?

[crazyjj]

My son is really interested in robotics and hardware stuff. Is there some site out there that has a list of components and accessories for sale (like robotic arms, led displays, etc.) that will work out of the box with Raspberry Pi's? I've seen a few of these for other prototyping hardware controllers, but the prices were a bit steep.

Re:Good site for Raspberry Pi hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Adafruit.com has some nifty items. Also checkout hackaday.com for some interesting raspi stuff.

Re:Good site for Raspberry Pi hardware?

[capedgirardeau]

I would check out the RPi forums and potentially the wiki. There are a lot of folks who use the RPi for robotics.

Here is a link to the sub forum that includes robotics, but I bet there are robotics threads in lots of other places on their forums as well:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=37

And here is the RPi wiki:
http://elinux.org/RPi_Hub

Feel free to ask on the forums, I have found them to be very friendly.

Re:Good site for Raspberry Pi hardware?

[Hemlock Stones]

I can personally recommend these: http://www.dfrobot.com/ http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/robot/robotstore.html http://www.societyofrobots.com/

How about actually shipping them?

[Terrasque]

How about actually, you know, shipping the things? Ordered a month ago, only thing I've got from it so far is an automated email and a PI-shaped hole in my paypal account..

Less mucking about, more actually delivering stuff please.

Re:How about actually shipping them?

[niftydude]

How about actually, you know, shipping the things? Ordered a month ago, only thing I've got from it so far is an automated email and a PI-shaped hole in my paypal account..

I see this comment all over the place. Who did you order from?

I have two already. Bought mine from element14.

I don't mind about the extra ram, cause the tasks I'm using these ones for don't require it.

Re:How about actually shipping them?

[Terrasque]

Ordered from raspberrypi.rsdelivers.com - one of the two that was recommended from http://www.raspberrypi.org/ page.

I looked at element14 but they didn't seem to have a casing for it, so I ended up at the other recommended place.

Re:How about actually shipping them?

[Sique]

Same with me. I ordered mine at Element14, and about a week later, I got it.

Re:How about actually shipping them?

[wjousts]

I'm in about the same place. I ordered from Allied since I'm in the states. Their website now states:

*Please note that due to extreme demand and short supply, the estimated delivery time is uncertain and will likely take several months. We do regret the delay and inconvenience this may cause.

I e-mailed them last week and they never got back to me. Fucking useless.

Re:How about actually shipping them?

[Picass0]

Order a Model B last month from element14, it took 1 week to arrive. I live in Nebraska.

Re:How about actually shipping them?

[rdnetto]

Here's a useful reference point: I ordered one from both element14 and RS at the same time. The RS one arrived several weeks after the one from element14. I ordered another one from element14 more recently, and it arrived in under 3 weeks.

AFAICT, most of the people complaining ordered theirs from RS. I suspect part of the reason may be that RS is using a completely separate website and therefore likely has a completely separate administrative process for fulfilling orders, which isn't as capable. Element14 just added them as items to their regular site, so they aren't subject to the same limitations. (I'd say that was a pretty good move on their part, given that I've since ordered lots of more obscure components from them.)

Re:How about actually shipping them?

[Tarkhein]

Interesting. In my case, RS 'offered' the Rasberry Pi a month earlier than element14, so I jumped at the chance despite the 11 week despatch time warning. Later, this was delayed an additional 5 weeks, probably due to this RAM upgrade. Even now, RS warn a 6 week lead time between order and despatch, whereas element14 is 1-2 working days.

Re:How about actually shipping them?

[SimonTheSoundMan]

RS have been terrible.

I ordered one, two months later they cancelled my order for no reason. Ordered another in July from RS, one month past so I went to Element14. Element14 delivered in 3 days, ordered a seconds one a couple of weeks later and that took 2 days. My second RS order from July still hasn't arrived.

My local Tesco has RPi for sale in the CPC (Farnell) section.

It reminded me how incompetent RS are. I used to make orders of components, used to take weeks for everything to arrive. Farnell can get them to me by next morning.

Re:How about actually shipping them?

[Xenna]

"I'd say that was a pretty good move on their part, given that I've since ordered lots of more obscure components from them."

Same here, I didn't know they existed before, but now I have placed 4 orders with them.

Re:How about actually shipping them?

[coofercat]

If you have a Farnell account, you can get a Pi in two days (or at least, that's what I did).

I went to the site, and it says "business users click here" - I did, and it asked me for my Farnell account number, and then left me with an item in my basket with an estimated 3 week delivery time. I actually got it 48 hours later.

Failing that, buying as a consumer, as you say, gets it pretty quickly too - faster than RS by the sounds of things.

THE!!!!

[organgtool]

I have been reading Slashdot for fourteen years and I have never once complained about the grammar in a summary before (usually there are enough pedants out there to do more than enough complaining), but this summary is horrible. I do not blame the submitter because I realize that English may not be his or her first language, but I though Slashdot was supposed to have some sort of editors who at least read the summary once before posting it to the front page. I had to read the second sentence several times to confirm that it meant what I thought it did and in the rest of the summary the article "the" is missing at least two times. I really do love this site, but if you want to call yourself an editor, then please do the job or turn it over to someone who will.

Re:THE!!!!

[L4t3r4lu5]

I have been reading Slashdot for fourteen years and I have never once complained about the grammar in a summary before. Usually there are enough pedants out there to do more than enough complaining, but this summary is horrible. I do not blame the submitter because I realize that English may not be his or her first language, but I thought Slashdot was supposed to have some sort of editorial staff who at least read the summary once before posting it to the front page. I had to read the second sentence several times to confirm that it meant what I thought it did, and in the rest of the summary the article "the" is missing at least two times. I really do love this site, but if you want to call yourself an editor, then please do the job or turn it over to someone who will.

Muphry's Law strikes again

Re:THE!!!!

[Ginger Unicorn]

but I though Slashdot was

Did you?

Re:THE!!!!

[organgtool]

Good catch! To my credit, I'm just some random shithead posting a quick comment between work tasks and not a member of the editorial staff responsible for posting stories on the front page. :)

Re:THE!!!!

[bill_mcgonigle]

Hey, I upvoted the other sumission on this on the firehose, but expected this flamebait version to be accepted. And, predictabaly, there's a big thread debating the flamebait about the merits of being an early adopter (again...).

The Slashdot community gets the editing it deserves.

Re:I know this sounds stupid, but...

[Narishma]

What would those reasons be? It's the same price as the 256 MB version. If you don't want the extra RAM, nobody is forcing you to use it.

Alternatives

[wjousts]

Anybody got any leads on a decent alternative to the Raspberry Pi? Since it seems impossible to actually get hold of one and I'd like to get a really compact embedded computer for a project.

Re:Alternatives

[Brit_in_the_USA]

Try researching:
Audrino, TI MSP430 Launchpad, TI Stellaris ARM Cortex-M Launchpad, Electric Imp

Re:Alternatives

[Narishma]

If you want to get hold of one, just don't order it from RS/Allied and you'll be fine.

Re:Alternatives

[wjousts]

I've used the Netduino before, and it's not quite the same thing.

Re:Alternatives

[ssam]

There are lots of arm dev boards. though none quite as cheap as the raspberry pi. for example I have had a beagleboard for several years, its a bit bigger (though still tiny by most standards), and quite a bit more expensive. If you want smaller you could look at gumstix. if you only need 8bit then arduino. if you want ubuntu support you could look at pandaboard. if you want a 16/64 core coprocessor then parallella.

Re:Alternatives

[wjousts]

Thanks. The pandaboard and the gumstix look very interesting.

Re:I know this sounds stupid, but...

[scythian_monk]

I am sure you will be able to find folks who want to sell off their 256 MB Pi to buy the upgraded one.

switch distributors

[Chirs]

The one distributor (RS, I think) is notorious for crazy long shipping times, while the other has almost always had stock. Cancel your order, go with the other guy.

Re:switch distributors

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent post is correct: RS has had atrociously long shipping times (though they'll charge your credit card almost immediately). Go with Farnell/Newark/Element instead.

And if you're not keen on trusting an AC's posting, go check the Shipping forum on the Raspberry Pi site for a second opinion.

Re:switch distributors

[Anonymous Coward]

Fairly certain RS is just scamming a lot of people at this point, considering you can get a dozen Pi's shipped next day from anyone else.

Re:switch distributors

[kelemvor4]

The one distributor (RS, I think) is notorious for crazy long shipping times, while the other has almost always had stock. Cancel your order, go with the other guy.

Thanks, I just cancelled the order.

Re:switch distributors

[bigrockpeltr]

this is true but i didnt cancelmy order with RS because i live on a tiny rock in the middle of the ocean and they offered a cheap shipping rate even though they are from the UK and im actually closer to the US whereas the other guys (farnell) that are US based wanted around $45-50 dollars to ship... which is more than the cost of the device itself.

the other thing is that i bought it jsut to play around with and not for any particular need so i dont really mind waiting. (hopefully should be here soon since i ordered in july lol)

Re:switch distributors

[sonamchauhan]

Check out myus.com if you shop online a lot

Re:switch distributors

[XcepticZP]

I also cancelled my order. It's been THREE MONTHS today since I paid for my order with RSComponents. Today I cancelled my order with them. Tomorrow I reverse the payment with my CC provider. This is BS.

Re:switch distributors

[speardane]

pity - I received my model B from RS - Yesterday...

Re:switch distributors

[Douglas Goodall]

Farnell is not so great. They lost the first shipment to me and it took them 6 months to refund my money. Their business practices $#&%. I will never do business with them again.

Allied is RS Components....try Newark

[Chirs]

I've seen tons of horror stories from people that ordered from RS Components (AKA Allied). On the other hand, people ordering from Farnell/Newark/element14 seem to be able to get them within days.

switch suppliers

[Chirs]

Cancel your order and go with Farnell/Newark/element14

Order via Farnell/Newark/element14

[Chirs]

They seem to be handling this competently, while RS Components/Allied seems to be screwing up royally.

Re:Order via Farnell/Newark/element14

[wjousts]

Yeah, that does seem to be the observation a lot of people are making. I might well cancel my order with Allied and try ordering from the other guys.

Re:Order via Farnell/Newark/element14

[SimonTheSoundMan]

So are Tesco at some stores. They sell the CPC (Farnell/Element14) kits.

Newark still shows $35

[Chirs]

with 100 in stock to ship

Some Pi Alternatives

[evilviper]

If you want a smartphone, the Alcatel Venture has comparable specs, and sells for $50, contract-free (and VirginMobile also has some of the cheapest cell plans, too, if you want to sign up).

If you want a desktop, you can usually get a used, mini P4 system (40w idle) for $32 from geeks.com. Better deals are often available from local off-lease PC dealers.

If you want a tablet, Walmart stocks a 7" Pandigital unit for $50.

If you want video streaming and 1080p decoding, the D-Link MovieNite Streaming Player, DSM310 is selling for $38 at WalMart.

If you want network-attached cameras, you can find ethernet and WiFi (g) models with PTZ, built-in mic and speaker, and night-vision for $50, maybe less.

With the Pi needing binary blobs as well, I really see nowhere than the Pi makes sense.

Re:Some Pi Alternatives

[jockm]

Hmm none of those systems have open pins for hardware work, only one is roughly the same size, you can't really install any linux you want on most of them, only one can be run off of AA batteries.

And while you can to a lot with the hardware you mentioned, it isn't the same as having a small, relatively powerful, piece of generic hardware.

Binary blobs don't bother everyone...

Re:Some Pi Alternatives

[marcosdumay]

Binary blobs don't bother everyone...

Know what bothers me? People like the GP saying something akin to "The Pi uses a proprietary blob! That's bad! Go buy this completely proprietary system instead."

Re:Some Pi Alternatives

[jockm]

I suppose it means what you mean by teaching hardware to kids. If you mean using the Pi as an example of hardware they can completely understand, then you are right.

If you mean teach kids to make hardware projects using the Pi, then it is perfectly suitable.

While I am sure there are those who think the former, most of the discussion about teaching hardware I have seen has been about the latter.

Re:Some Pi Alternatives

[fa2k]

Depending on your requirements, the Arduino board may be better for hardware work. The AVR microcontroller has much much lower specs than the R.Pi, but the electrical connections of Arduino are much better, with more pins and an ADC. R. Pi go out of their way to warn you about experimenting with the GPIO pins, because they are not protected and can fry your Pi. You can add something called a Gertboard to the Pi and that has a huge number of connections, but I couldn't figure out how to get one or if it was available at all. I agree that Raspberry has its place though, as it's a credible computer, which can do things like image processing, and the Arduino is not (nor does it pretend to be)

Re:Some Pi Alternatives

[evilviper]

Bullshit. You're looking at $80-$90+ for those kind of features.

Wow, you're quite the idiot, aren't you?

How about $45.50 from Amazon right now:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JLPWAK/

Re:Some Pi Alternatives

[jareth-0205]

I don't think you really 'get'what it is, there's very little like having a ubiquitous platform that has many hobbiests all clustered around it providing support and enthusiasm.

But that's ok, you don't have to get it, and can continue to not buy it. The rest of us will be having fun with our toys...

Re:Some Pi Alternatives

[marcosdumay]

the Alcatel Venture has comparable specs, and sells for $50

Walmart stocks a 7" Pandigital unit for $50

the D-Link MovieNite Streaming Player, DSM310 is selling for $38

How was that not what you said?

Re:Some Pi Alternatives

[evilviper]

No, a Pi can do ONE of those things... at a time.

If I needed network attached webcams for a short time, then a streaming video player for a short time, then an Arduino for a short time, I might get a Pi. But I can't see that scenario ever happening.

If I need an IP camera, I'll get an IP camera (or an old Android phone). If I need a streaming video player, I'll get one. And I will NEVER expect or desire to have one of the cross over and do the job of the other, cause I want them both.

If I wanted one device to do EVERYTHING, I'd get a PC. A Pi is so low-end that it really won't be able to do more than one of these tasks at a time, and is so horribly limited in expansion capabilities that you'll always be working around its limitations, and spending more money to get things done in the end.

Re:Some Pi Alternatives

[Xenna]

It make make no sense to you, but it makes sense to me. If there are enough people to whom it makes sense and who are actually willing to spend their money and their time to get one the project makes sense, business sense.

And it certainly seems that way...

Re:Some Pi Alternatives

[marcosdumay]

If you want to tinker and do OS stuff, customize the kernel etc. then binary blobs are a serious problem.

Yes, they are. Is that an excuse to bulshit people into getting proprietary systems?

Re:just cancelled my pi

[3dr]

Locating a source has been a problem due to demand and what appears to be limited production. I've periodically checked, but have not found it in stock yet. But, I ordered 2 today while reading the comments here, and Newark's estimate is delivery this week. We shall see.

Re:Why the complaints?

[jones_supa]

Probably because people started to use this as a full Ubuntu system.

Re:just cancelled my pi

[3dr]

Well, that didn't take long. My order for 2 is back-ordered, not shipping until Oct 26. NBD, but if an online retailer is going to bother posting any inventory counts on a product's page, and a customer places an order that *their system* states has N units "ready to ship", then just how does this become back-ordered?

How tasty is this pi?

[Trogre]

512MB is nice and all but, other than the cute name, what does the relatively closed architecture of the Raspberry Pi have over other efforts such as the Rhombus A10 project?

Re:How tasty is this pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly that the Raspberry Pi actually exists and you can buy one now.

Windows on ARM

[tepples]

You are correct that applications exclusive to the x86 editions of Windows won't run on ARM CPUs outside of DOSBox, and any Windows application old enough to work well in DOSBox is probably two decades old and made for Windows 3.1. But several Windows family operating systems do run on ARM: Windows CE, Windows Phone 7, Windows RT, and Windows Phone 8. I'm not aware of any Wine-alike project to run applications for these environments under GNU/Linux or Android on ARM.

And let me nudge the goalposts slightly with another likely scenario: Say an application is ported only to Windows, Mac OS X, and iOS. It won't run on GNU/Linux on ARM, despite being ported to another ARM environment.

Sweet berry pi

[niftymitch]

By George I will have another...

The little thing is a hoot and a holler...
I have a couple and may grab some more.

Watchers on the ARM front should keep an eye out for an upgrade to the Pandaboard family.
The OMAP 5 seems to be alive and running on a board with no name.

Go for the full *nix

[dbIII]

It's a fully open platform so you don't need a compatibility layer (android) to get to secret hardware underneath. Android doesn't even have a fully working X yet so you are more limited in the applications that can run than if you run a compatible linux, bsd, or whatever.

Re:Go for the full *nix

[evilviper]

I generally agree with you, but there could be many good reasons to run Android. It's certainly the better choice for touch-screens. And even on a desktop-like system, android apps are designed to be small and fast, while their desktop equivalents are nightmarish resource hogs. Firefox and Chrome are great examples of that. And while the source code of both is open, I've yet to see any lightweght desktop version being forked off.

Android has a number of applications that Linux lacks... Netflix streaming, all manner of games, native Pandora client, Winamp, and untold numbers of others.

Re:Go for the full *nix

[dbIII]

X has been used on touch screens since back before linux existed. Multi-touch is new, but I can't see it as being any more difficult to do on X as on a frame buffer.

Re:Go for the full *nix

[evilviper]

Yes, X has been used, but there were a ton of crappy touch-screen devices. IOS and Android took off for a reason, and it's in large part because good decision were made in designing the touch-screen UI.

If your touch-screen interface involves clicking on a scroll-bar or scroll buttons, you've failed... miserably.