Raspberry Pi gets its memory doubled

gus, I'm not as young as you might think. :)

Looks like it now has almost enough memory to be really useful :)

[Ducks, runs and hides]

Useful for running Windows?

Nah, still too little for that.

Sounds like this hardware has found exactly the right niche. :)

This time of year I prefer pumpkin pie :)

@penguinist: You could be nice and share the link for ordering these wee beasties.

Sure caitlin, you go here, but be forewarned, Newark's servers are nearly unreachable today.

Ok I'll give an LXer exclusive tip on how to get your RPi-512's on opening day (if you live in the US):

1. Forget about placing an online order. It's hopeless.

2. Place an old fashioned phone call to Newark's order desk (1 800 463 9275) and place your order with the fine person who answers the phone. This will put you at the front of the line.

Ask for Newark stock number 43W5302, RASPBRRY-MODB-512M, @$35 plus tax and shipping.

Thank you. I'll wait for the furor to die down but that was a very helpful and useful post :)

I ordered one this morning with an enclosure. I am pretty excited to try it out. Maybe I will give armedslack a try. http://www.armedslack.org/

@slacker_mike: Be sure to read up here. I've been doing OK with it (even though Slackware ARM uses armel instead of armhf).

The Pi plays media great - but honestly the processor is so slow it is next to useless for normal computing usage in terms of browsing the net/doing web work.

Seems like a great teaching tool though - which is what it was designed for.

~Jeff

Quoting:The Pi plays media great - but honestly the processor is so slow it is next to useless for normal computing usage in terms of browsing the net/doing web work.

You think it can function as a media PC? I might want to give that a try.

There is a fork of the XBMC project, RaspBMC.

Also, the omxplayer which attempts to make good use of the RPi's GPU.

Using OMXPlayer the Pi plays 720p video 100% fine.

Haven't tried any 1080 stuff since I don't own a TV with that resolution.

~Jeff

Jeff91,

Yes I agree they should soup up their CPU. H#ll I can get a fancy Nexus 7 tablet for 200 bucks which is lightning fast and does 3D graphics easily. Surely a barebones system like the PI could be given a useful cpu for well under 100 bucks....

Montezuma - your post comes across as sarcastic to me? Was that the intent or am I taking it wrong?

The intent of my post was simply to state a fact about the device - it is something a good deal of content about the Pi fails to mention.

~Jeff

slacker_mike wrote:I ordered one this morning with an enclosure. I am pretty excited to try it out. Maybe I will give armedslack a try.

Do it mike. I wouldn't suppose you'd do anything else. I'm certainly going to.

FWIW, I jes upped my ancient P4 desktop from < .4G RAM to > .75G RAM. Slack leet didn't even shrug when I ran the lesser RAM. I could run gimp and youtube simultaneously, no problem. Such is the non-bloated beauty of Slack.

As for the CPU speed, I wonder what a 4 Pi Beowulf cluster would look like? ;)

So I ordered my Raspberry Pi from Newark/element14 on the 15th and it shipped on the 22nd which is faster than I expected.

slacker_mike:

They are out-of-stock, already. Next shipment Nov 29th. Fortunately, I wasn't holding my breath (much to the disappointment of LXer ladies) ;)

Jeff,

Not sarcastic at all. Just factual. Tablets are dirt cheap and pretty powerful so why not the PI?

@notbob: I have four of the 256MB units that I would let go for a good price since I've upgraded to the 512MB units. I can ship same day. Send me an LXer PM if you are interested.

Three units are new in original packaging, and the fourth is "tested and verified good".