Takeaway: If you’ve been lucky enough to receive your Raspberry Pi, then well done; you’ve beaten the gauntlet that is the Pi supply chain.
It has been almost three months since the highly anticipated Raspberry Pi launched, and the global queue for the credit card-sized computer currently numbers over 300,000, according to CM Lim, head of electronics marketing, RS Components, which is one of the suppliers of the device.And as for Australia, there are only 57 units that have been shipped to customers, or are in the process of being delivered. That’s less than five per week that have potentially come into the country.
Raspberry Pi: it’s an accessory lovers’ wonderland.
(Credit: Chris Duckett/TechRepublic)
Lim said that the focus of the device remains teaching programming skills, and that the priority is to get the Pi into students’ hands after the enthusiast queue has been satisfied.
Nick Heath has produced a number of stories that discuss potential uses of the Pi, but, after seeing it in action, I’d be cautious on many of them.
After my first encounter with the Pi, a fair chunk of its charm has been lost. That moment occurred when it took 20 seconds of waiting to load a rather small movie with gxine.
It’s hardly the Pi’s fault; it is, after all, only an ARM processor that is sharing its meagre 256MB of memory between the GPU and the rest of the system (64MB for the GPU, 192MB for the rest in the default scenario).
Sorry, folks, I just don’t think it’s cut out to be a home media centre.
I’ve wrestled with under-powered Linux computers masquerading as media centres before, and their specs would blow the Pi out of the water — and even they had to be given up eventually, as things like high definition, newer processor-heavy codecs, and Flash reliance took off.
Is the Pi a great toy? Yes.
Can it replace a TV media-centre appliance? Not on your life; for starters, I don’t think I could wait the months needed to negotiate the supply chain.
0 comments:
Post a Comment