Raspberry Pi launch turns into frenzy
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 29th Feb 2012 09:47 UTC
Hardware, Embedded Systems This morning, I experienced the nerd equivalent of a Black Friday $50 iPad sale. At 07:00 CET, the first batch of the much-anticipated Raspberry Pi went on sale, and while Raspberry Pi itself was very properly prepared, the two large international retailers actually selling the device weren't - despite warnings from Raspberry Pi about the enormous amount of traffic that would come their way, the two sites crumbled to dust within seconds. There's good news too - the cheaper model A has seen its RAM doubled at no additional cost.
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RE[2]: Very Generous!
by Garrrr_Pirate on Wed 29th Feb 2012 12:50 UTC in reply to "RE: Very Generous!"
Garrrr_Pirate
Member since:
2012-02-29

I seem to recall quite a bit of nail biting and apprehension on their part. Are you sure you were reading the same forum? They knew it would be a catastrophe no matter what, and I'd say they did an excellent job of making it possible to even buy a device.


Yes I read the same forums, they assured everyone that it was in hand. People asked over and over for a pre-order system to avoid this but the reply was always that it was not required.

You say that as if you have proof they were lying. They didn't "claim" it, they stated it clearly.


Well they clearly failed to warn them of the scale, warning them covers all manner of sins from "you may see a blip in traffic" to "do you realise that this will cause xx00,000 unique hits"


Perhaps because they knew from first hand experience how that would likely bring the resellers' servers down? 100,000+ rabid geeks hitting F5 for 24 hours prior to launch would mean there would be no servers to order from at launch time.


I'm not suggesting that they released them to the public but posted them on their page with the announcement, they stated that they didn't have them from the suppliers this morning. Do you think 100,000 geeks would cause more or less server load following a direct link or mashing the site search?



Citation please? If they didn't have contacts at the resellers, how did they arrange the reseller agreement?? You aren't making a lick of sense.


http://twitter.com/#!/Raspberry_Pi/status/174758342680514562

http://twitter.com/#!/Raspberry_Pi/status/174789638907637760

They admit they couldn't get hold of RS, they had to find out the details of the launch of their own product from a customer.

It took them three and a half hours to contact Farnell, hardly a sign of a close working relationship with either. Surely if they had communicated the scale of this thoroughly you'd imagine there would be a bit more communication between them.


That was a smart move, and I applaud them for it. How else did you expect them to be able to stay up? Once again you display an utter lack of common sense.


By planning for it, I don't think it displays an utter lack of common sense, to question this there are sites that handle more traffic every day, how do they manage?

Farnell didn't enforce the one per customer rule so it seems likely that large numbers have been hoovered up by individuals.


I have no idea if this is true but I hope it isn't. Do you have proof of this? I'm genuinely curious as your wording seems to indicate you have proof.


http://twitter.com/#!/Hexxeh/status/174773218383638528

Try it for yourself, you can put as many as you like in the qty box, I know the initial run has gone. Rpi admit themselves they don't know. There is a guy on Ebay who had a load for sale. He may have been a scammer but that doesn't seem to be the case.



BZZT, wrong! I (pre)ordered one with no problem apart from an understandably slow server on their end. I'm an individual in the U.S., just to be clear.[\q]

Oh well, every cloud, as long as you got one.

[q]I don't see how they could have done better, apart from securing several more vendors. But for each vendor they may have added, it would be yet another bunch of hoops to jump through. I think they did a fantastic job considering the entire situation.


In short, by planning for it, speaking to the vendors and not being so adamant that dropping an incredibly small stock of something that was so obviously in demand all at once was totally the best idea. To be honest I'm starting to think that this was all deliberate to generate as much publicity as possible.

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