I bought one. If you really look at what all you're getting, it's not expensive at all - in fact, I think it's something of a deal (esp. given supply chain constraints and the value added by their mainboard i/o, case, etc.) I've been CTO for nearly a dozen companies and have access to world-class PCB and mechanical prototyping facilities and staff, and even with all that, I decided that buying the PiBox was cheaper and better than rolling my own.
I hope they're making enough margin on these things to keep going, as I'm really pretty impressed with the company and its people so far - I really want these guys to succeed!
And as an aside to those who say the Pi is underpowered and not capable of serious work, I'll note two things: 1) You're wrong (search Cray in comments above), and 2) That was the argument against Linux 20 years ago. Like Linux then, the RPi will succeed in the end because it provides an open standard platform, and although it is not best at anything, in aggregate, it is getting better much faster than the competition.
Just want you to know your comment made our day over here - thank you! We genuinely have made it has cheap for customers as possible. Balancing the cost versus what we need to survive and keep the doors open is quite hard, and I think we've learned why there are so few hardware startups!
Re: Pi Power - it's quite amazing how many well-behaved apps you can run on an 8GB pi. Some self-hosted apps that are written in Rust and Go these days use 3mb of memory, it's amazing! There will always be that particular game server that makes power users want more, but that's life!
Glad to make a difference. Thanks for building the PiBox, BTW. It looks to be a great product, and I'm looking forward to getting mine soon. (Since you've said y'all are assembling them here in Texas, I'm hoping my shipping is quicker, since I'm here in Austin!)
I've done a few hardware startups, and while they're definitely a much bigger PITA than straight software, they're also more rewarding because they create a lasting tangible artifact of value. (And because you mostly can't fix your screwups by pushing a new build or patch, so you just have to do a better job up front.)
I agree with you that standard servers are really valuable, and hope this convergence of open hardware and software architectures is how that concept can gain traction and momentum in the marketplace. And yeah, these little computers are really capable of quite a lot of real world work!
I hope they're making enough margin on these things to keep going, as I'm really pretty impressed with the company and its people so far - I really want these guys to succeed!
And as an aside to those who say the Pi is underpowered and not capable of serious work, I'll note two things: 1) You're wrong (search Cray in comments above), and 2) That was the argument against Linux 20 years ago. Like Linux then, the RPi will succeed in the end because it provides an open standard platform, and although it is not best at anything, in aggregate, it is getting better much faster than the competition.