I can't help but feel that Eben took the wrong approach with pre-orders. I think pre-orders and taking cash up front was exactly what was what needed.

Its a good thing that they've done the first 10,000 manufacturing batch, but on top of that they mismarketed the release date by combinging it with the RS Components and Farnell annoucement. They should have made that annoucement separately to test demand through the supplier websites and then making a preorders annoucement with a view to deliver on all preorders (be it 1000, or 100,000). I imagine will pan out ok, and that consumers will get hold of boards now that the major manufacturers are involved and the stellar publicity that the RPi has received. The bad news it will take time for them to gear up to full production.

Today's mess was that they tried to annouce public release with news about new (untested) suppliers, and pulled all the strings in their long running BBC News campaign. Too much focus all in one place. Now the general public is involved and expecting cheap computers, when what is actually being sold is nothing more then a motherboard. The public needs to wait for technical folk to get there hands on them, to test out SD cards, distros, cases, wireless adapters, etc. and then do a proper launch. The only thing that seems to have glued it all together was Twitter, so congrats to those guys.

At the end of the article, "it's very nice that they're considering it now."... maybe so, but it sure would be nasty if they had to post a terminally ill astronaut home, kill them on the spot, or dump the body in an asteroid field...

... are they considering bringing them back home?