I ordered my Raspberry Pi at the end of July and gleefully received it within 1 week, so my timing ended up coinciding with the latest shipment from Element 14. Basically this shipment came a few weeks after the batch that was received by those that pre-ordered 12 weeks ago.

Anyway! Here she is compared with a dried up blueberry from that batch that I bought on sale and which went bad way too fast, dammit!

Here’s another angle showing off those sexy Ethernet and USB ports. Not bad for a 35 dollar computer that really is about the size of a credit card. And no, it doesn’t really fit in an empty box of Altoids. The corners of the box are too round for that!

And here’s the beast that Raspberry Pi is gong to replace as my XBMC media server. You served me well these past 7-8 years, but it’s time to retire your power hungry, overheating ass to the storage room.

Once I decide which Operating System to use for my Raspberry Pi, we’ll be in business. Current players look like Raspbian, OpenELEC, Raspbmc, Xbian, and IPFire, but there are more, so do your research or try them all until you find one that works best for you. Also noteworthy is Fedora Remix for your R-PI, which is coming soon.

Even better, there’s a very nice comprehensive comparison list of all available Raspberry Pi operating systems over at eLinux.org

Note: you could use a MINIMUM 2G card, but probably go for 4G (Class 10) and up so that you have enough Swap space. Also, get a class 10 card for best performance.