28 Jun
2012
28 Jun
'12
3:50 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 09:07:28PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
But as I saidm, watch for hidden costs...
They're not hidden.
--
David Cantrell | Enforcer, South London Linguistic Massive
It's my experience that neither users nor customers can articulate
what it is they want, nor can they evaluate it when they see it
-- Alan Cooper
> On 06/26/2012 01:23 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
> >> About the Raspberry Pi in particular...I'm having a very hard time
> >> getting excited about it. It's a neat board, to be sure, but it's
onl=
> y
> >> the twentieth or thirtieth design just like it (and nobody got this
> >> excited about its predecessors), and you can't actually GET one
withou=
> t
> >> spending months on end on a waiting list.
> >=20
> > I am a bit surprised by the sheer level of hype myself,
>
> As am I. People are talking about it like it's the first small form
> factor Linux machine.
Price. That's what's exciting about it.
The Rpi board is only part of what you need. You also
need a PSU,
keyboard, mouse, USB hub, SD card and some kind of monitor. Even without the
last, that would essentailyl double the cost of the device. Please don't
tell me I can find those extras in the trash/junk box. I can't. My junk
box doesn't contain PC bits. It does contain enugh to build a computer
from scatch though.
But most normal people who might be interested *do* have all of those.
And then there's the OS. From what I understnad
the Rpi doesn't come wit
hthe OS. You have to download it onto an SD card yourself. That's a major
problem for me.
If downloading it and putting it onto an SD card is too difficult, then
Farnell or RS will be happy to sell you an SD card with an OS installed.
If it came with an OS, that would make it more expensive (don't forget,
even free software has costs) and it's likely that a lot of users would
blow it away and replace it with some other flavour of Linux anyway.
The docuemantion is attrocious. I couldn't find a
schematic, or a real
hardware manual.
Errm, what consumer electronics comes with a schematic these days? The
information that normal people will need - people who want to build
peripherals, or interface it with other stuff, not just people who want
to use it as a cheap media player - is available on the website.
the extreme cheapness is what is driving people.
That must be it. See below.