Powerful, wallet-sized Raspberry Pi computer sells out in SECONDS
Tiny Brit wonder hardly even touched the shelves
The first batch of 10,000 ARM-powered Raspberry Pi computers went on sale at 6am GMT on Wednesday - and sold out within minutes.
According to distributor Premier Farnell, there were at least 600 orders, visits or pre-orders every SECOND, producing a 300 per cent hike in web traffic. The electronic component sales site was knocked for six by the surge in demand for the $35 GNU/Linux-powered gizmo.
The board's other distributor, RS Components, also received a huge number of orders. Both companies are now taking pre-orders for the next batch of Raspberry Pis.
Designed by boffins in Blighty on a not-for-profit basis, the Pi shot to fame when first announced by being credit-card sized and very cheap: it's a fully functional system capable of, among many things, 1080p video playback and hardware-accelerated graphics. It used a Broadcom multimedia SoC that includes a 700MHz ARM1176JZF-S core and 256M of RAM.
That's the Model B's specification and there's also a cheaper Model A coming. Both of these are named after the BBC Micro, the 1980s computer best known for its role in UK education - and the charity behind the Raspberry Pi hopes to similarly jumpstart interest in computer science among young Brits.
Raspberry Pi Foundation spokeswoman Liz Upton took to Twitter earlier to say: "We're amazed at the level of interest and sorry so many of you were frustrated today."
Farnell spokesman Ken Leitch told El Reg: "It's been a phenomenal day. This is an incredible little computer, we knew anticipation was huge and it sold out very very quickly, within the hour. We had a massive amount of interest across different territories - half a million interactions with our site in 15 minutes at its peak."
The next batch of boards is expected to go into production within the next few weeks. ®
COMMENTS
Re: On sale at 6am.
Michael M - the Reg Hardware lads had the news up at 6.02am. This is the follow-up.
C.
Congrats to them
No seriously, no sarcasm (wow, thats so rare for me). My hats off to them for all the struggle and tears and work they've put into this off their own backs because they believed in it and have actually got some sold.
I bet you many people pooh-poohed them ever reaching market as they read the various blogs and announcements of plans and then eventual delays and issues that crept out. How many projects have you followed that looked so promising but never had the drive to get to that fabled 1.0 version and just disappeared in a whiff of disappoinment.
These guys, on a shoe string, and mostly by goodwill have found a way to get this thing shipped in a way that gives them a breathing space and hopefully lets them concentrate on what they want to do rather than having breakdowns and financial ruin. Every step of their process has been finding the best possible compromises whether it be time scales, or components, to keep to their design goal of price.
We've seen the hit even big companies like PC World/Comet have taken when there is great demand (HP I am looking at you) so congrats on having the same effect at 6 frigging am on two suppliers. Congrats on finding a business model that keeps you going and lets more of these be built going forward without the headache of continually financing it you've had upto now. Congrats on (without a marketing campaign) getting people talking about this and getting it shown prime time and getting people interested enough to decide whether its going to offer them something they want.
Ignore the nay-sayers about the validity of the project (personally I think its a great thing) you have actually done it and whilst it wasn't a 100% smooth launch, you've acted respectably (I love the way you are going after the ebay fleecers...) and done something damn near impossible because you believed in it and should be proud of everything you've done.
Way cool.
My faith in the future of the world just got a little lift.
GJC
Pre-Order
RS was just showing a form to register interest in it.
Thought I was doing well ordering it through the Irish site, until the delivery note was emailed with an ETA of 16th April.
I wonder how much of these sales are the likes of HUKD-ers buying for the sake of it being a bargain, then a small circuit board arrives and they don't have a clue what to do with it and go back to their laptops and iPads.
Re: Re: I cant wait for mine!
Well, it's a small low-power computer with some hardware acceleration for media, so maybe they'll use it as a small, low-power computer that can do some hardware-accelerated media stuff.
Or, for example, if your cable box is fucking shite and uses 20W in standby just so you can have fast access to an EPG instead of waiting for an hour after it turns on, instead of paying $15 per year in electricity for the privilege of fast EPG access to find out whether there's anything worth watching on TV, you could have a little low-power media server that could read the information off the internet and display it for you. Maybe it could stream some music from Pandora for you while you check the TV listings at the same time, which your Blu-Ray player can't do.
