Pricing updates for Raspberry Pi

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/826

by Ecio78 • 14 years ago

106 54 14 years ago

kennywinker3• 14 years ago

I understand their reasons for doing this, and I appreciate their transparency... but the way raspberry pi has gone about selling their product is frustrating. I just want to hand over my money and get one as soon as I can possible have one. I don't want to keep having to check back and sign up for mailing lists and register my interest etc. etc. etc.

The sooner I can place an order and have my credit card charged, the sooner I can stop thinking about it and be pleasantly surprised when it arrives on my doorstep.

corin_4• 14 years ago

> the way raspberry pi has gone about selling their product is frustrating

Would you rather they not let anyone buy them until they had more than enough to sell to absolutely everyone who might want one?

Or is there a third option that they should have taken?

pieter• 14 years ago

The other option would be directly selling them themselves, instead of being at the mercy of a few existing retailers.

I'm not sure that would go smoother, but at least you wouldn't have to go to each retailer and sign up for their lists or having to check their sites which one will get a new batch first.

(EDIT: I'm not saying I would think that's a good idea, but I think that's what the GP meant)

ajross• 14 years ago

Um, what?

They could backorder them like everyone else does. Advertise a product and price. Accept orders at that price for existing stock and scheduled deliveries. And repeat that process as more become available.

As an optimization, allow a fixed-sized queue of "pre-orders" at the same price. Though you have to be careful with this because you're selling things you aren't guaranteed to get. Amazon can cover the losses from mistakes here, small vendors can't.

RobertKohr• 14 years ago

They should have charged more.

It is obvious that demand was way more than supply. When demand is too high, you raise prices to decrease demand to match with your supply. When you increase supply you can lower prices to have demand match it.

In the long run they want to make it so everyone can have one for cheap, but really they don't have the infrastructure to do that. By selling at a higher price they can use the extra money to build out that infrastructure and then lower prices.

wr14722• 14 years ago

consumerism in all its glory.

freehunter4• 14 years ago

In what way is this consumerism? Consumerism is commonly used as a pejorative to refer to entitled people buying things they don't need. Raspberry Pi is not a consumer product, it's a niche project. This isn't a case of people trampling each other to buy an iPad so they can buy more apps and iTunes music. People want these so they can create. That's not consumerism.

dsr_• 14 years ago

I am pleasantly surprised that this didn't turn out to be an unexpected price increase.

zrgiu_• 14 years ago

me too. Maybe the op can change the title to also include the "good news!" part. When I first saw the title I was actually expecting some bad news.

Ecio78• 14 years ago

it looks like I can't edit it, dont know why..

jff• 14 years ago

Me too... I came in wondering, "Ok, how have things been screwed up yet again?". Glad to see it's something positive.

obtu• 14 years ago

It's a significant decrease here. And RS's fixed world-wide pricing is a guarantee the prices of both retailers will be reasonable everywhere.

noonespecial2• 14 years ago

Yeah. A bit disappointing. Its been weeks since the launch, and the only thing I can do is register my interest in a product that, even when available here in the USA is coming very close to being double the magic $25 I was hoping for(1).

I somewhat infamously predicted last December that if the RasPi had trouble shipping and didn't deliver on the crazy low price that made it nearly disposable that the magic could be lost.

It seems to me that they are one "Beaglebone" clone (shaving an Andy Jackson off the price) away from irrelevance. In many ways, the 'bone is already way ahead with "cape" addons and a vibrant community.

Now is the time for the foundation to fight relentlessly for their core principles. Cheap, open, available. I want to believe.

(1) I am aware that only B is for sale and the $25 is for A which should become available at some point.

beagle32• 14 years ago

> when available here in the USA is coming very close to being double the magic $25 I was hoping for(1).

You were expecting a free-shipping model A, and instead have to pay for shipment (the horror!) and only have the model B available (exactly as they say). If there's any problem here, it lies with your expectations.

You can wait till the Model A becomes available. You can also arrange for people at your hackerspace to order 100 together to make the shipping cost negligible. Other than Apple, RP seems to be as good or better at delivering on their promises as any other vendor. And apple mostly deliver on their promises because they hardly ever make any.

corin_4• 14 years ago

> You can also arrange for people at your hackerspace to order 100 together to make the shipping cost negligible

Out of interest, is this currently possible with their one-per-person restriction? If not, would be nice if there was a way for people to group together and get one-each, all in a single shipment.

noonespecial2• 14 years ago

From Newark, the B is $40 before shipping. Even if I could get one, I can only get one. But I can't get one. Their hook was "Raspberry Pi | An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!" They set up that expectation. I can't do that yet. Its a bit disappointing. That's all I'm saying.

What I really wanted was a handful of A's where the price of each one, even after shipping (thanks to the multiple unit order), is damn close to the $25. I'm still hoping they'll get there. Its just disappointing that this hasn't happened yet.

Someone is going to provide a so-cheap-its-disposable linux computer. I really do want it to be the Foundation.

odiroot• 14 years ago

The double price thing is something that pains us Europeans constantly when we buy something from the US.

It's always tax, shipping, duty fee and so on. The price is usually over 200% at the checkout. Sometimes (talking to you Amazon) only there you are given the notice you can't actually order this piece of hardware to Europe.

ars2• 14 years ago

I really wish it had VGA output, without that it's useless to me since I have no spare monitors to connect to it.

augustl• 14 years ago

HDMI => DVI => VGA should work, no? A lot of adapters, but at least you'll get a signal out of it.

ars2• 14 years ago

I checked - those adapters cost more than the Raspberry Pi! Around $50.

The cheap cables you may be thinking of require the device to output a VGA signal.

jdub• 14 years ago

The HDMI socket on the Pi carries a digital signal only.

j_s• 14 years ago

HDMI => DVI would be enough for every monitor I've owned in the past 5 years.

runeks• 14 years ago

The thing is the digital-to-analog converter would simply add too much cost to the device. A lot of these kinds of boards don't include VGA output because analog is (relatively) expensive, compared to digital.

polshaw3• 14 years ago

Since all TVs/Monitors/Projectors have had HDMI for some years now, i think it was a wise choice. IIRC there is still composite out for those stuck with only analogue connections.

brk• 14 years ago

Not sure where you are located, but in most bits of the US (and many other countries) you can find a small used monitor on Craigslist that has a DVI/HDMI port relatively cheap.

chj• 14 years ago

any one actually lay hands on this thing?

franze• 14 years ago

> Currently we are restricted in selling to private individuals in Austria only.

anybody knows why that's the case?

itmag3• 14 years ago

I'm seeing this Raspberry Pi meme on HN a lot lately so I guess I should look into it?

What kind of cool things will I be able to do with it exactly?

JshWright• 14 years ago

I'm confused by your use of the word 'meme.' A meme is generally some sort of fairly abstract thing (e.g. a funny picture of a cat with various witty statements superimposed on it).

This, on the other hand, is a physical product, so I'm not sure how it could qualify as a 'meme.'

itmag3• 14 years ago

Haters be downvotin' instead of answering my honest question.

So far I know of 0 cool uses for a Raspberry Pi. I don't have time to research every new HN trend in detail either. That's why I ask for a summary of what this thing can do for me.

polshaw3• 14 years ago

It's a tiny, low power, low cost computer. The uses are almost infinite.

angersock• 14 years ago

It's a cute toy for running Linux. You can play Quake 3 on it.

Other than that, it might be useful for teaching programming...?

nitrogen2• 14 years ago

I don't have time to research every new HN trend in detail either.

So in your laziness, you expect us to do it for you?

kennywinker3• 14 years ago

Quickly off the top of my head:

- Low power home servers (media, voip, etc.). - Digital signage. - Portable computer, just add keyboard+monitor. - Hobbyist controller, like arduino but you can code in higher level scripting languages (python/ruby/etc).

There are plenty of other uses. It's small, low power and runs linux... the possibilities are endless.

SandersAK• 14 years ago

I'm confused. I just put in a pre-order for three of these via Newark. Has that changed?

Pricing updates for Raspberry Pi

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