Planes, trains…
Eben and I are off on a work trip to the US tomorrow, so we won’t be posting here, in the forums or on Twitter for the day. Normal service will resume on Friday, provided I can find some decent coffee.
Bits of news: it turns out that the very first person to place an order for a Raspberry Pi with element14 in Australia was an engineer from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, which hosts a large permanent collection of computing history. There are some nice pictures of the first unit on that continent being delivered here. Australian and NZ orders took a bit longer to reach customers because they’d gone from China to Cambridge to Leeds to Australia. From now on, they’ll be shipping direct from China, so the wait won’t be as long.
We sent press units out at the end of last week, and the first reviews have started to surface in magazines. PC Pro magazine has given us five out of six stars – they’re the first to publish a review, but we hope more will emerge as the week goes on. Keep an eye out for more!
56 comments
Michael
Can you bring me a pi? I’m in Florida, the weather is nice here.
liz
Ha! Nice try. :)
coolius
PC Pro? Bit tech have had their review up for over a week! :-P
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/pcs/2012/04/16/raspberry-pi-review/1
liz
I know (and posted about it at length in the forums) – but it’s kind of cheating for me to call that out as the first review from the press batch we sent out last week (which had different software on them from the Bit Tech one); they got in early because the journalist, Gareth, had a board early; he’d been doing some development on it for us.
David Kindred
Coming to the DC area? If so, come eat dinner with my family. My three boys are very excited about the RasperberryPi and we’d love to meet you. –David
liz
Sadly not – I hope we will in the future, though.
David Kindred
The invitation remains open for when you do come to town. Come eat some food with us and make new friends. Our whole family would love to meet you!
scep
Top review from PC Pro! Nice one :)
Riccardo Moretti
South Africa is still waiting…
bgreat
Great initial review. The PC Pro reviewer presented a very balanced perspective.
tbar
The PCPro review mentions that an USB connected keyboard is required to boot the RPi. Is that a requirement of the firmware or the used distro?
liz
The distro we sent them required a login and password.
Andrea
well, they say “refused to boot until we had a keyboard connected” that is quite different than having to connect a keyboard to login (when the login prompt appears the “boot” is already done!)
So the question is, can it boot without a keyboard connected?
scep
yes, it can boot without a kb connected.
Jorim Tielemans
ZDNet Belgium has just given a Hangout on Google+, pretty impressed!
Ricky Carleton
Thanks for the posts! Tides me over while I wait for my Pi to finish cooking.
bobbintb
out of 6 stars? kind of an odd scale.
TinBane
I would have thought it an even scale :P
Alex Langer
Bon voyage! Have a safe trip :)
juanRIOT
May the force be with you on your travel.
This guy who was the first to place an order in element14, is an entirely different person from that one who donated a RasPi to a museum also, right? The one that was bid off in eBay?
And what specifically did he do to be the first to place an order?
Fair review from PC Pro. And finally some idea for me, how it behaves the first time out of the box.
liz
Yup – completely different museum, completely different person, completely different continent. (The auction one was donated by the winner to the Centre for Computing History here in the UK – they’re in Suffolk, and are about to move to premises in Cambridge.)
To be the first to place an order, he called element14 in Australia on the phone as soon as the sales page went up.
Jason Ozolins
Makes sense that an engineer who probably already has an account with element14 would be able to get a phone order in pretty quickly. At any rate, certainly quicker than the element14 home page loaded for me only a few seconds later… :-)
John Beetem
Coffee recommendations (JMO/YMMV): If you’re in San Francisco, Berkeley, or Alameda try The Beanery AKA “The Little Roaster That Could”. Caffè Trieste is also good. If you must use a large chain, I prefer Peet’s over Brand S.
If you’re in Berkeley, send me an e-mail and I’ll join you at Caffè Strada which is the best of all :-)
If you’re in Silly Icon Valley or Southern California, my sympathies.
ukscone
When I lived in Berkeley (1991) Peets on Vine used to be my morning coffee stop. Nice walk down Alcatraz and along Shattuck. I was there (had actually driven that day for once) when everyone first started wondering what all the smoke was in the hills on the day of the Oakland Firestorm
Andre_P
I remember Peets on Piedmont Avenue Oakland, my gf at the time was of the opinion that all the customers were ambulance men.
Ray
If you’re on the ground anywhere Colorado, give me a shout. If you’re not, then just wave out the window as you fly over.
Ray
^in^
Harrkev
Me too. Colorado Springs area.
Grumpyoldgit
“Work Trip”. I seem to remember you mentioning a date with Captain Kirk, earlier in the year.
liz
Indeed. That’s on Saturday. (Not a school night.) The rest of it’s work, though!
DeliciousRaspberryCake
Museums are receiving the raspberry pi sooner than non-museum holders. I wonder what that means for its future. One of the first 10 boards was also donated to a museum (in the UK).
JamesH
So, that’s actually two boards out of 10k. Not a huge percentage….and lots of people have got theirs before museums…
Paul Johnson
If you guys are coming to the Bay Area, I’d love the opportunity to buy you a couple of beers!
wombat
I have yet to find any good coffee in the states… So good luck in your hunt as we will all miss you if you cant post!
Paul Johnson
You need to look harder.
Roys Station in Japantown in San Jose, CA is the place to go!
liz
Worth knowing – I’ve been down that way for sushi before, but never for coffee!
Paul Johnson
Try the chocolate croissants they get as well. Best I’ve ever had (and from the size of me, I’ve clearly tried a lot of them!)
SiR
Really good review, and some of the best photos of the Pi I’ve seen.
Tom
My Australian Raspberry Pi arrived on Tuesday 24 April 2012 at about 9:00 (AEST-10). I was pretty excited when I got email from Element14 at 5:15 pm the day before and was surprised when it turned up early the next morning!
I wonder how many Australians got theirs before me?
But it didn’t work! Oops, yes it did – when I wrote the SD card correctly. /dev/sdb1 is not /deb/sdb, sigh.
I went ahead and checked out the GUI and Scratch. Nethack is compiling right now…
photon
I’m still waiting for mine. The element14 website still says that my order is being processed..
It would have been nice if mine arrived on the 24th, that was my birthday.
photon
I’m still waiting for mine. The element14 website still says that my order is being processed..
It would have been nice if mine arrived on the 24th, that was my birthday.
Tom
On Pi Day (29 Feb) I gave up on the UK sites and placed my order with au.element14.com. Pi Hour was 16:00 local time, and my order receipt was dated 17:17. I hope your Pi turns up soon.
Tom
Nethack works very well! Just had to
sudo apt-get install libncursesw5-dev bison flex
and make a minor change in a couple of files… And now I am playing. First death will no doubt be very soon.
Azandrias
Just got mine today! Just couldn’t hide my excitement and everyone at the post office was looking at me strangely.
lobster
I thought my Pi was not working too . . .
Onward
To speed up the excellent Debian Squeeze, we are recommending a process of puppification
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppi
Just to let you guys know:
Puppy creator Barry Kauler will have a board soon
We are working from the Arch (under Qemu) and Debian side to bootstrap and compile for Puppy.
Smaller, friskier, More Fun
We will be running as fast as our little legs allow
rob
Mine showed up last week also. Got order confirmation at 5:04 on launch day from element14 au website.
Alvaro Brandon
Have a safe trip.
Jim Barber
Aww come on Liz… bring us poor US people some pi’s. lol My delivery date still says August and I ordered it in February. Have a safe flight. Welcome to the USA!!
Jim Manley
As always, there’s a place reserved (in front of, or behind, clear polycarbonate panels, your choice :) ) for you, Eben, whomever else might be in tow, and as many Pi boards as you want to bring at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, in what was originally Silicon Graphics’ international marketing building. So, the spirit of GL is deeply ingrained in both the musuem and the Pi! We also now have a world-class gourmet cafe in our lobby where you can have as much fine coffee/espresso/lattes made from freshly-ground beans from the highest-rated fair-trade coffee plantations in the world. The pastries and other fat pills are also guaranteed to please – I’m sure we can arrange for them to produce as fine a raspberry pie as the Foundation has, but, much more palatable! ;)
Paul Johnson
It is a quality museum as well. I was almost crying whilst gazing upon their Commodore Amiga!
Saw a demonstration of the Difference Engine as well.
It’s really well put together. They deserve a lot of praise for what they have done.
Mustafa Azam SEZER
Planes, trains…
There was once this amusing film: Planes, Trains and Automobiles. You made me remember that. :)
Have a nice trip. If you’re ever planning to come to Turkey, inform me please.
stephan
I just dont understand that UK-secrecy. Why is the content of all .uk web sites not visible outside the UK. Why should I use proxy to read a review of a product being available worldwide.
Yanno
I don’t think it’s secrecy. As far as I know it’s only BBC content and it’s mainly due to the fact BBC content is paid for by an annual license fee (basically a tax on TV owners) and aired freely in the UK but sold via BBC Worldwide outside of the UK. Under contract, BBC UK isn’t allowed to air content outside of the UK as the overseas purchasers would obviously not be happy with that. So I am afraid it’s finding a friendly proxy on the Little Old Country Island.
Lynbarn
As Yanno says, because of its charter, the BBC cannot offer most its online services outside of the UK, but there are many other .uk sites you should be able to view, unless (depending on which country you are in) they are being blocked at your end? Try one of my websites: http://lynton-rail.co.uk – there should be no restrictions on that, apart from some members’ and staff only pages.
Kevin Wiltshire
Oh yes! I’ve just received an email from Farnell/Element 14 and my Pi will be delivered sometime during the week beginning 7th May. I was fortunate enough to get my order in around noon on Pi day, so obviously I missed out on the first batch, but was hopeful I might be included on the next.
rew
May 7? That should be second half of the first batch….