Raspberry Pi Production Delayed By Factory's Assembly Flub 132
nk497 writes "The first shipment of Raspberry Pi devices has been delayed, after the factory manufacturing the cheap educational computer used non-magnetic jacks instead of ones with integrated magnetics. The problem is already nearly fixed, but new jacks need to be sourced for subsequent shipments, so those could be delayed slightly. 'It's inevitable, isn't it — you're freewheeling along perfectly happily and then you get a puncture,' said spokeswoman Liz Upton, apologizing for the delay."
Re:How wrong I was! (Score:4, Insightful)
I can understand this critisism as I've had it many times over many different periods of "omg, not another <whatever> story".
But I'm way too damned excited over the Rasperry Pi to care! Kinda fun being on the other side of things for a change :D
How's that cheap Chinese production looking now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Still good value?
What about when the returns start flooding in because a 1 cent component failed when a 2 cent one might have soldiered on? Budgeted for handling that?
I know these guys are amateurs, but do they really need to keep demonstrating it?
Re:So, delayed anyway. 20-30% increase in cost... (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps you would be interested to find out what the tariff actually is? Or perhaps your definition of "extortionate" isn't the same as mine. Hint: the upper limit across the various electronics tariffs, last I checked, was 14%. Broadcom does not deserve the blind trust geeks seem to be awarding it over this Raspberry Pi project: even though some of the characters may be familiar, we're a long way from the days of the BBC B where a bunch of bright uni students got together with academic entrepreneurs.
It is, of course, quite absurd to charge on components but not on finished computers. A tariff should be a function of rights imbalance and amount of work involved. So a relatively free nation would not be subject to significant tariff, whereas a nation like China would be subject to a high tariff, the tariff increasing for completed products as more work was done under conditions not acceptable to the consumer nation. I cannot think of a better way to get developing countries to improve their citizens' fortunes. Can you?