The Raspberry Pi foundation has announced it will lift the purchasing restrictions on its $35 Linux computer. The organization's manufacturing partners will soon make the board available for bulk purchase.
The highly anticipated computer faced enormous demand when it launched in February. Retail partners were unable to cope with the traffic hitting their websites on the night when the tiny system became available for preorder.
The foundation had originally intended to work with a manufacturer in China, building the system in increments of 10,000 units. When it became clear that such an approach would never be able to fulfill demand for the product, the foundation transitioned to a licensed manufacturer model. It partnered with RS Components and Premier Farnell, two major electronics distributors based in the UK.
The two companies agreed to sell the initial batch of units for the foundation and then take over subsequent manufacturing and distribution. Due to the limited supply of units available from the initial manufacturing run, availability of the Raspberry Pi computer was constrained. The foundation limited purchases to one per customer.
Now that RS and Farnell have ramped up their Raspberry Pi manufacturing efforts, the little Linux computer is soon going to be easier to obtain. According to a statement published today by the Raspberry Pi foundation, the manufacturers are producing approximately 4,000 units every day.
The purchasing limits have consequently been lifted, making it possible to purchase the system in much larger quantities. The ability to bulk order Raspberry Pi units is a major win for schools and businesses that want to take advantage of the low-cost Linux computer. Schools, for example, can finally buy enough to be able to hand one to every student in a class.
We first reported on the Raspberry Pi computer in January when it entered the manufacturing stage. The inexpensive computer was originally conceived as a tool for teaching computer programming to young students, but it also attracted a large following of Linux hobbyists and embedded computing enthusiasts. The computer is a bare board, roughly the size of a deck of playing cards, with a 700MHz ARM11 CPU and 256MB of RAM.
Source: http://arstechnica.com
Source: http://arstechnica.com
