Raspberry Pi held Up By CE Certification

[the_leander]

The Raspberry Pi computer, launched in February, has finally arrived in the UK, but the distributors have refused to ship it before it gets the “European Community” certification mark.

The first batch of 2,000 boards arrived in the UK on Monday, but it requires testing before it can be sent to customers. Raspberry Pi Foundation previously believed certification will not be necessary.

Read on.

 

[Glaucus]

They better hope it goes through without any need for changes. Although they could probably turn around and sell those boards to Asia or Africa and still make a profit.

I was thinking of buying one. For that price, you can't go wrong. It would be a fun little toy. Maybe set it up as a media player or something.

 

[the_leander]

I was thinking of running XBMC on it and hooking it upto an external 1GB hd I have laying around.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Send them to Canada!

Actually I'm sure we run into the same problem here. Certification. Maybe I should get them to send me one now and I can take it for certification.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

I'm just wondering if some large computer manufacturer could wield enough influence to hold up certification. If you got little garage businesses springing up and taking Pis and packaging them into cheapo media servers for forty quid, maybe thirty-five, are there any companies that might worry about their own margins?

 

[the_leander]

I'm just wondering if some large computer manufacturer could wield enough influence to hold up certification. If you got little garage businesses springing up and taking Pis and packaging them into cheapo media servers for forty quid, maybe thirty-five, are there any companies that might worry about their own margins?

Unlikely, it's in a hobbyist marketplace where anyone attempting such a thing would be very badly stung if it were ever found out. This thing is of interest to geeks and that's about it, it'll not worry mainstream vendors.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Unlikely, it's in a hobbyist marketplace where anyone attempting such a thing would be very badly stung if it were ever found out.

So, in England people aren't allowed to make things and then sell them?

 

[the_leander]

So, in England people aren't allowed to make things and then sell them?

Errr, not sure where you got that idea from. What I'm saying is, is that the hobbyist market is small enough that a company that began acting like a pariah would quickly loose support.

 

[Glaucus]

I think what Fluffy suggests is possible, but none of the major vendors would probably see this thing as a real threat. I mean, it's really just a motherboard, you can actually get much more powerful ones for just a little bit more (Atom boards for $99 do exist and you can get pre-packaged media players ready to hook up to your TV for about the same). All things considered, if this were ever to be offered here in Canada, you know it's price would be way more than $35. It would probably double actually, because well, we're Canada!

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

All things considered, if this were ever to be offered here in Canada, you know it's price would be way more than $35. It would probably double actually, because well, we're Canada!

Yes and no.
The R-Pi people have already set the world wide pricing and that is the Pi price in Canada.
However, in general you are correct. I just bought something on Amazon that I initially tried to buy from Amazon.com for $66. They couldn't ship to Canada and I went to get it from Amazon.ca. From there the price was $99!!! WTF? The Canadian dollar has been hanging around parity within about 1% with the US dollar for more than three years now but we still pay a difference like it was 2002!!