Please….I know of a lot of people who are interested in the performance of such a combination.

Why did you go with Hiawatha instead of Apache with Arch?

I agree with JamesH.

A few times a week I come here, read the news, check out more forums, or new videos on Youtube and am come out of it totally thrilled.
Look, Im not a gamer even though Ive been known to play games but I couldnt stop smiling when I read the title that said Quake 3.
I havent been this excited about tech since my friend Jamie explained GPL and Linux to me somewhere in the mid-90’s.
Come back, learn, participate, share ideas: THATS how you make a community stronger. Seeing all these people help on servers, forums, video tutorials, Gert’s work and all the rest are just as thrilling to me as getting myself a new toy. Because its not about me or the fact that I want a cheap computer in my garage when I work on my car: its about what it can do to get kids involved hands on and about making the computing affordable for kids of all socio=economic backgrounds.

Of course if R-Pi has a tendency to make me babble on too much, its because I realize its not about me but what it can achieve.
Its really a great high ;-)

Sidebar: how does the community feel about sites like modmypi.com? I had heard a few negative things on an IRC chat recently but I think we need a larger ecosystem outside of just the foundation.

As far as I know, you said, you dont want preorders, because you dont need any money from community in advance, because you have enough money. Yet you tell us now, you didnt have money to manufacture more than 10k units in first batch? Imagine all 100k people would pay you in advance, you probably would be able to manufacture more than 10k units.

This sort of problem (money related), always has a solution. When I was an undergrad student in the Cambridge Computer Lab in the ’70s, one of the professors (I can’t remember which; it may have been Roger Needham or it may have been David Wheeler, it might have been both), told us that it was amazing how many problems could be solved by an extra level of indirection. After 30 years in the City I found that the same was true in finance.

Next time you do this try something like the following: If you are going to make a board costing around $25 with strong demand, set up a development company and issue shares for $50, which will give you a big cushion in the event of extra costs. Every “member” is promised a board, but if costs overrun they may have to pay a little extra.

If things go really badly, the investors lose their money, you get a bad reputation, but that’s life.

If things go well, everybody gets a board and the profits are donated to the Foundation.

You don’t have to worry about consumer protection because the “buyers” are equity investors taking a real risk not consumers.