The good news is that this finally means we have a date for the first batch: the boards will be finished on February 20. Eben and I may be going to China to make sure that the boards can be brought up properly for that date if necessary. We’ll be airfreighting them to the UK immediately, so you should be able to buy them before the end of the month.Source
I'm sooooo excited :-D.
These are populated boards from our first run of beta devices. They’re undergoing electrical testing alongside hardware and software testing at the moment, and if all goes well, the Raspberry Pi you’ll be buying in January (or by auction later this month if they all work as they should) will be exactly like one of these.Source
I am crossing fingers that beta test runs fine. It is so awesome that such a tiny device can do such a lot.
While browsing through the internet, i also found another device called CuBox. This device comes with a pre installed os, so it is really plug and play. The main advantage are the available ports, like hdmi, two usb, eSata etc. I found a german review on "Der Standard.at". I also stumbled over OpenELEC which is a optimized linux to run XBMC and has an easy to install (on hdd, flash etc.) guide. Maybe my i will plug in such a device in my tv at home soon :-D.
A little arm cpu with an linux runs quake 3 in 1080p mode. But that is not the main goal for this project. Here you find the entry and a video