Demand for the Raspberry Pi has gone through the roof, despite no local pricing or delivery date being available.
Channel partners for New Zealand are electronic componentry companies RS Components and elemental 14. The latter is based in Sydney but is taking online pre-orders.
"There's been overwhelming demand," says a spokesperson for elemental 14. "We've been inundated; it's out of control."
This despite the fact that she had "no idea" when delivery would take place.
Nor does RS Components. Spokesman Mike Kelly says people should register on its website. "We'll give them more information when we know."
Kelly says computer products are not one of the company's core strengths but that the Raspberry Pi is a core piece of kit for developers.
The Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to stimulate the teaching of basic computer science in schools. There are two models, priced at $US25 and $US35. The foundation is a UK charitable organisation supported by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and Broadcom.
The device is roughly the size of a USB stick. Anyone who wants to use the Raspberry Pi needs to plug it into a connector dock via a USB connection that will hook it up to a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. The computer runs on open-source operating system Ubuntu and utilises other open-source software such as the Iceweasel Web browser and the KOffice productivity suite.
The Raspberry Pi has a 700MHz ARM11 processor and has 128MB of SDRAM.
