Wow, great. I'm can't even get into the preorder stage...
Finally we have a cheaper alternative to the beagleboard to play with.

Want to ask a fundamental question this board can be powered by a microUSB right? Im thinking of purchasing one, then making it to be a lightweight media player for LCD TV (my TV got usb port and hdmi port at the side)., so that I can connect it to LAN, and play those media files tat my internal TV Media player cannot play...

This is definitely a good alternative to WDTV Live-S cuz no external power brick required

Or even better, can be a media transcoder where it can just feed from the switch / NAS's power via USB Port, and stream to other devices like the PS3, phones etc.

This post has been edited by SnoWFisH: Mar 8 2012, 04:32 PM

My colleague jst ordered, E14 has stock in local warehouse in Malaysia! Due to arrive next monday . . At first he doesn't believe the date in the invoice as well and contacted the local sales rep for E14.
RM145 including shipping for B Model.

I don't think bulk order will make the price any cheaper for now, since E14 and RS implemented a MOQ (Max order quantity =.=), of 1 unit per person.

I'll try to get some unboxing pictures

This post has been edited by SnoWFisH: Mar 9 2012, 03:29 PM

We'll see on Monday!

I have no idea...i din't order yet...my colleague balik already....I keep you guys posted on Monday

Update, as we all expected, E14 emailed my colleague that his shipment will be delayed as there is no stock in the warehouse (First batch of manufacturing just popped out from the factory of course no stock lah! ).
He was told that the earliest he will get is end of july.

He then went and cancelled his order.

Yeap, chances are you might need a VM to run it. However, i think u can run windows 8 embedded on it.

Yeap . Oh well, I guess I'll wait too. First batch got no case, but subsequent batches should have.

i'll wait for the batch which comes with case...no need to worry about random static

Don't say I din't warn you that the it will come in July!

Anyhow im planning to order with a toolkit too. Too bad its limited to 1 unit per person otherwise cuz i got quite a number of friends interested in ordering it

Another item on my wishlist, Rasberry pi having a wireless ethernet inside

it comes with wired ethernet only...

Wireless is my wishlist lah

Intel Atom processors alone is enough to send the price of the rpi equivalent board to be of higher cost. x86 is of CISC and ARM is of RISC architecture. ARM is good for very specific platform optimization, making it very suitable for embedded devices that is aimed at specific purpose. x86 architecture on the hand is aimed at general processing due to more memory related features, making it not suitable for RPI boards due to costs, as it requires extra overhead to perform the same features that ARM architecture can do, with more resources.

Also, x86 architecture is a home-grown designed by Intel, which AMD adopted too. While Intel is investing heavily and still struggling to bring its Atom chips to be on par with ARM processors in the embedded market, their cost and performance are still behind ARM processors.

If you are a designer given the choices, a matured processor designed that's designed for small scale embedded devices in mind and a processor that's improving by leaps and bounds, but still largely inefficient in terms of calculations per watt and performance, which would you choose? If ARM was not that good, Microsoft wouldnt include ARM as a platform you compile against.

Each architecture has its pro and cons, like a digital camera and a video camera. You will not be seeing much x86 processors in handphones/embedded devices, and you will not be seeing any ARMs at all in NASA space stations.

I'm glad RPI designers adopted ARM as its architecture. Its hell trying to optimize the performance for x86 platform, in a very memory constraint environment.

This post has been edited by SnoWFisH: Mar 27 2012, 03:27 PM

That's my intention of purchasing RPI. plug it into the usb port of the TV, and output it to the TV as a portable media player.

Or, a media transcoder for streaming purpose.

I think there's already an XBMC build for RPI.

This post has been edited by SnoWFisH: Mar 27 2012, 06:03 PM

For streaming it should be enough. I need to get the board first to be able to to test it out...July....