Taken for what it is, actually. You pretty much nailed it in one.

Oh, but all they've got in the tank is meaningless drivel. People call it "research" but it's bunk.

Oh, don't confuse them with the facts...their minds are made up based off of their feelings.

Applied with a clue-by-four, no less.

It needs software tuned/em for it. It CAN do all of those things. Expect Flash to play? Sorry...Flash for Linux isn't even available on ARM from Adobe except as an embedded application you have to bundle if you're an embedded systems vendor.

There's more like that. The biggest problem YOU and others seem to have is what a PC really does and the like. A Pandaboard would've failed many of the review items that the Endgadget reviewer did. But...it's a dual-core A9 and it CAN do all those things...so long as you have applications. Lightspark might bring Flash to the R-Pi and other ARM devices...but you'll need to make it work with OpenGL ES before that'll happen.

But it can do browsing and other things. The Endgaget reviewer went and did several boneheaded things- whether out of ignorance or deliberation will be left as a determination by the reader...

XBMC does do what they're claiming it does. It DOES run Quake III:Arena. The thing is...you can't just nab any old Linux binary and run it. You have to code to leverage the GPU to get it to do many of the heavy load-lifting things and only the things they showcased before release have been made to work that way.

The biggest thing (and they never changed their tune...you lot may have not been paying attention...) is that they've said from the beginning that this was intended for computer science education , not as a general purpose computer (though you CAN make it that way with a bit of effort- effort, I might add, that's being done by several of the distributions working on producing a version of their project for the R-Pi...).

They're becoming available right now... If you were in the queue for one from Farnell at the release, you should be getting one by end of this month (My story...). After that they'll be fufilling orders for these as fast as they can crank them out and you can then pre-order them.

And run a browser properly? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UWwUEPh9EI

Quite simply, unless you know what you're doing, you're probably better off NOT trying to use/get one right at the moment. It's intended for technical and deep embedded type applications right at the moment. It COULD be a desktop replacement for some categories of things- but it's a bit raw for many of those uses right at the moment.

Hell, unless you get it "right" you're not going to be able to use a Beagleboard, Beaglebone, or Pandaboard for a desktop replacement. It's very possible to do this with the R-Pi or any of those boards- but the reviewers in the large have been idiots or jackasses trying to do things that they honestly knew better or should have.

No. It'd raise the price up past where they're at right now. A dual-core config with a similar sweetheart deal on the SoC's is available as the Pandaboard- and it's priced at $179- there's a hint in that that MANY are missing, especially the reviewers without a clue that make themselves and the site actually look bad.

Yeah, they really need a special permission for accessing ads from specific services.

Every free app needs net access, and therefor the permission is meaningless.