Raspberry Pi retailers swamped by demand
Demand for $25 Linux computer on a stick is so high two U.K. sites buckle under traffic pressure on launch day.
Remember that credit card-size computer that runs Linux and goes for just $25?
After the product missed its January launch, the British Raspberry Pi Foundation, which created the ARM-powered computer, finally put it up on sale via two U.K.-based electronics component retailers yesterday. Both sites promptly buckled under the resulting Web traffic.
Even the Raspberry Pi Web site has been changed to a static site due to the heavy load.
The low-cost computer already appears to be sold out at one of the retailers, Farnell, while the other, RS Components, is only taking down the details of interested buyers. Stocks are expected to be replenished in another month or so.
While the Raspberry Pi launched with a single $25 Model A, there's also a higher-end $35 Model B, which has an additional Ethernet port and two USB 2.0 jacks. The $25 Model A is "going into production immediately" and will also be getting a boost in memory, from 128MB to 256MB. Both versions are powered by an ARM11 processor running at 700MHz with a graphics chip capable of decoding high-definition videos.
Although the Raspberry Pi project was conceived as a low-cost computer that could children to learn programming, it clearly appears to have attracted a following among hobbyists, too.
