Ronald Reagan and Raspberry Pi

Some time late 80's Ronald Reagan told a joke:

You know there’s a ten year delay in the Soviet Union of the delivery of an automobile, and only one out of seven families in the Soviet Union own automobiles. There’s a ten year wait. And you go through quite a process when you’re ready to buy, and then you put up the money in advance.

And this happened to a fella, and this is their story, that they tell, this joke, that this man, he laid down his money, and then the fella that was in charge, said to him, ‘Okay, come back in ten years and get your car.’ And he said, ‘Morning or afternoon?’ and the fella behind the counter said, ‘Well, ten years from now, what difference does it make?’ and he said, ‘Well, the plumber’s coming in the morning.'

On 28th of September preorders for Raspberry Pi 5 were opened. I did not preorder it immediately, but slept it over and placed my preorder at 6am the next day. I surely did pay 100% in advance. What I did not know at the time is that every ~6 hours was postponing delivery by ~1 month. So while first preorders were delivered in early November (unless you are a celebrity), mine was fulfilled only in early January. Still, it is better than what was happening with Raspberry Pi 4 at the peak of silicon shortage where one easily had to wait 6 months. These who really needed it surely could have paid scalpers 200% price (not sure why manufacturers hesitate to do it). Hopefully, queues for electronics will get shorter over time, not longer (although with current Taiwan situation there could be surprises).

Now, having 2 precious Pi's in my hands I can feel the privilege. The hype is partially justified, my coremark benchmarks confirm 2.2x performance boost at 1.5x power consumption and PCI-E is real. There is still quite a lot of room for further improvement until Raspberry Pi reaches 100W peak power consumption :-)