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I haven't seen anybody post this yet, but a new a vastly more powerful Raspberry Pi has been released, see:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/
&
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31088908
&
http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... -35-price/

Highlights are:
* Quad core Coretex A-7 @ 900Mhz (replacing the old 700Mhz single-core Arm 11)
* 1GB Ram (previous versions had half that)
* same price

As an owner of the earliest model-B Raspberry Pi, I'm finding this update very interesting!
Apparently it's going to be a while until they are available in the U.S., but I'll probably get one in the next month or two.

This is perfect! 1GB + an ARMv7 quad... this completely solves the reasons why I wouldn't get one. Element14 is out of stock, but hopefully it'll hit other mainstream US channels soon.
EDIT: Bought one anyway from Element14, no idea when it's supposed to ship.

And here is Microsoft being serious as being the underlying system of all things Intarwebs...

For the last six months we've been working closely with Microsoft to bring the forthcoming Windows 10 to Raspberry Pi 2. Microsoft will have much more to share over the coming months. The Raspberry Pi 2-compatible version of Windows 10 will be available free of charge to makers.

Visit WindowsOnDevices.com today to join the Windows Developer Program for IoT and receive updates as they become available.

Hands on but not put through any real testing: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/02/raspberry_pi_model_2/

Oh man this is gonna make motion work so much better on my security cam builds.

To me this is a disappointing upgrade. I was hoping for something close to this.
http://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-c1
Same Price.

I'm proud to have backed them to make Pi happen. I'm not proud what I was able to achieve with it when it arrived :\

Still, I'm planning to get this one too. This one looks more potent and I'll prolly be able to make it work as HTPC with XMBC or maybe with more powerful distro.

allreadydead wrote:

I'm proud to have backed them to make Pi happen. I'm not proud what I was able to achieve with it when it arrived :\

Still, I'm planning to get this one too. This one looks more potent and I'll prolly be able to make it work as HTPC with XMBC or maybe with more powerful distro.

It should at least have enough power to decode DTS audio now with the quadcore (although I would still gladly pay for a DTS license for it to be enabled on the DSP).

allreadydead wrote:

I'm proud to have backed them to make Pi happen. I'm not proud what I was able to achieve with it when it arrived :\

Still, I'm planning to get this one too. This one looks more potent and I'll prolly be able to make it work as HTPC with XMBC or maybe with more powerful distro.

It's done; I'm getting one and I'm going to do some tinkering. My main goal will be reliable MKV playback using a local USB port. It needs to be able to cover all the common hi-def codecs (H.264, VC-1, and MPEG2), at least one of which has failed to work properly on every device I've tried so far.

Just in time for Valentine's day for that geek sweetheart of yours (or for your SO to give to you once you've hinted loudly, like I probably will).

chuckula wrote:

As an owner of the earliest model-B Raspberry Pi, I'm finding this update very interesting!
Apparently it's going to be a while until they are available in the U.S., but I'll probably get one in the next month or two.

Newark says March 16th.

This would be my first purchase of a Raspberry Pi. I have a friend who would run the earlier models in a sort of distributive computing like model in order to host a website.... odd and round about way of doing it but hey, whatever floats your boat.

My interest one would be to replace a Dell Precision workstation that is utter glut for the purposes of Windows 7 + XBMC. With the ability to run Windows 10 and for free... $35 and I already have tons of the good Micro USB power supplies.. man. The possibilities are endless. I'm already thinking of placing one at each major site for client so that I can remote in an do work from my own type of workstation configured the way I like it. I'd also like to look at making a mod for my older truck (97' F-150) to mount it behind the dash for all sorts of goodness.

Welch wrote:

This would be my first purchase of a Raspberry Pi. I have a friend who would run the earlier models in a sort of distributive computing like model in order to host a website.... odd and round about way of doing it but hey, whatever floats your boat.

Strikes me as a "just because you can" sort of exercise. Unless you're in unusual circumstances, e.g. needing to host something using solar power or something.

just brew it! wrote:

Welch wrote:

This would be my first purchase of a Raspberry Pi. I have a friend who would run the earlier models in a sort of distributive computing like model in order to host a website.... odd and round about way of doing it but hey, whatever floats your boat.

Strikes me as a "just because you can" sort of exercise. Unless you're in unusual circumstances, e.g. needing to host something using solar power or something.

Yeah I think it was just because he could there was no special circumstances for why he needed it. He rationalized it by saying that if one died, he could swap out a unit and the system would keep running flawlessly. Which just further sounds like the modular style server computing I think AMD was talking about pushing harder in. Small little cards you can slide into place and as they die or need upgrading you just swap them out, no downtime and easy upgrade path. Assuming your "backbone" to it all is capable of supporting new models and increased bandwidth.

Anyhow.... When the heck are these Pi 2's going to be available for sale? I hate it that places these days do a release and say things are now available but what they really mean is that they did a paper launch! Unless someone simply bought all of the units up in advance. If you go for more than a week with no availability then its not really available.

Welch wrote:

Anyhow.... When the heck are these Pi 2's going to be available for sale? I hate it that places these days do a release and say things are now available but what they really mean is that they did a paper launch! Unless someone simply bought all of the units up in advance. If you go for more than a week with no availability then its not really available.

They're available but being bought up. MicroCenter has a few, and Element14 just shipped mine. Should arrive tomorrow.

Bizarre hardware bug in the RPI2:
http://www.neowin.net/news/a-camera-fla ... and-reboot
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 28&t=99042

Apparently the power regulation chip is sensitive to xenon camera flashes. Take a picture of the bare board with a xenon flash while it is running and the power supply glitches, causing the board to reset!

just brew it! wrote:

Bizarre hardware bug in the RPI2:
http://www.neowin.net/news/a-camera-fla ... and-reboot
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 28&t=99042

Apparently the power regulation chip is sensitive to xenon camera flashes. Take a picture of the bare board with a xenon flash while it is running and the power supply glitches, causing the board to reset!

http://m.slashdot.org/story/213325

Interesting comment on this one about a photographer and Eels.

Welch wrote:

http://m.slashdot.org/story/213325

Interesting comment on this one about a photographer and Eels.

Had to have been a hovercraft involved.

I wonder if the "eel meter" was sensing the camera flash itself, rather than the eels' reaction to it. I guess we'll never know.

Electronics have long been susceptible to the EMP from high-powered camera flashes. I've seen it happen to analog electronics from the late 1970s as well as newer gear.

I remember some laptop screens would go blank, sometimes just half the panel (interestingly enough). The EMP from a flash does a lot. It's quite interesting this appears to be a photosensitivity issue instead.

I did a group order last week and mine have just shipped yesterday.
Element14/Newark is seeing a lot come in but they are selling just as quick.

Arvald wrote:

I did a group order last week and mine have just shipped yesterday.
Element14/Newark is seeing a lot come in but they are selling just as quick.

Ordered mine on the 2nd (had to be up at 5:30 that day, saw the announcement and immediately put in my order with Newark). It arrived on Saturday the 7th, but I only got a chance to plug it yesterday. It is sweet. It is, effectively, a usable desktop computer at this point. Simultaneously running Epiphany (Youtube), Minecraft and checking for new packages, I wasn't able to get the CPU meter above 33%. No lag at all in anything I tried to do. Youtube did give me an initial redirect to a landing site that said, "Your browser is old. Old!", but I was allowed to click through that and videos loaded and ran without a hitch. Am going to throw on LibreOffice and Chromium, see whether Chromium for ARM can use the Chrome Remote Desktop plugin.

I liked the old Pi, and even experimented with how functional it would be as an emergency/travel desktop replacement, but the Pi 2 is so far beyond the original that I'm going to have to start finding dedicated projects for the old B - I can't see wanting to do computing on it any more when its replacement is so much better.

Edit: Oh, and if anyone would like me to try anything on the new model, or you want to ask anything specific, let me know. I'll keep an eye on the thread.

I would be very interested to hear how LibreOffice performs on it. While technically compatible with the Model B (in the sense that you could install it, and it would load without complaining), IMO it was so slow it was really more of an initial proof-of-concept than a useful application.

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

...Minecraft and checking for new packages, I wasn't able to get the CPU meter above 33%. No lag at all in anything I tried to do.

How did you get Minecraft running? Or is this just the pi edition? I've been hunting down lwjgl libraries but haven't been able to try anything serious yet.

My experience has largely been the same--it's a totally usable computer that doesn't suddenly choke when it needs to do I/O. The CPU is a bump faster but the main thing is that having 3 more cores and a whole gig of RAM means you can do a lot more before it slows down.

Duct Tape Dude wrote:

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

...Minecraft and checking for new packages, I wasn't able to get the CPU meter above 33%. No lag at all in anything I tried to do.

How did you get Minecraft running? Or is this just the pi edition? I've been hunting down lwjgl libraries but haven't been able to try anything serious yet.

Just the Pi edition. I'm thinking I want to try the full thing, though, or at least the cell phone version. I'm willing to bet it would be acceptable, although I might have to turn down some of the graphical effects.

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

Just the Pi edition. I'm thinking I want to try the full thing, though, or at least the cell phone version. I'm willing to bet it would be acceptable, although I might have to turn down some of the graphical effects.

Ah ok. I'm very curious how the full version runs since the Pi version was so smooth. If you get the libraries working, let me know. I got the launcher running but it chokes once it needs to link to lwjgl.

I'm back to using it as a headless dev machine in the meantime, so if anyone wants me to test something from the commandline I can do that.

Well I got mine up and running last night.

I started with OSMC running Kodi. So far I am having trouble getting it past 30% CPU.

things start smoothly and play smoothly without any of the issues I saw on my 512MB Pi.