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As I have repeatedly mentioned, I am a medical student but i have huge enthusiasm for computers and stuff. As a result, I spend more time on my computer than doing what I am expected to do.... As a result of this enthusiasm, I occasionaly try to get my hands on the new stuff. Raspberry pi is not quite "NEW" but it is difficult to obtain, especially in areas where there aren't many official distributors. I had a wish to get it as soon as possible after the release of 512mb version but I didn't have the means to pay for it. Luckily, I found out that a store in another city has a few of these devices in stock. They have an online ordering faciltiy (online store) where I ordered the device. The price was an issue because they were demanding more than twice the actual price of the device, but as I had no other options, I decided to pay the extra money. So after two days of ordering, I received my device via a local courier service: The packaging was minimal (as is all over the world). Inside the envelope, there was an invoice and the Raspberry pi in its own very minimal packagin: As it can be clearly seen in the invoice, the amount I paid for the pi was PKR 6600... This is about $66 which is about double the price set by the original distributors. But when choices are limited, you have to pay extra.. So the box containing the raspberry pi clearly stated element14.com on it. I think they are one of the official distributors of the device and realted to Farnell.. But i don't care because I had no chance of buying directly from them. The box looks like this: Front: Back: So the packaging is very minimal (as is the raspberry pi itself). Inside, there was the raspberry pi itself and an instructions leaflet. See images below: So this is my new raspberry pi. When I decided it, I didn't have many uses for it in mind. I just wanted to have a feel of it and play with it a bit. I am not an expert linux user by any extension of the thought. In fact, I am not even an average linux user. I have made a few attepmts previously to try to master the linux beast but I had to give up for one reason or the other. However, because of my previous attempts, I can do the very basic stuff by myself and I am quite sure that this would help me playing with the pi. After getting the pi, the first thing I intend to do is to get my hands dirty with the linux OS. Try to master it and do things that I can do with my windows machine easily. I also spent some time seeing what other people are doing with their pi(s) (thanx google and internet). And now I can thing of a few pretty useful things i can do with it. First would be a testing server to sharpen my web development skills. I am sure that this would make me understand networking and connecting to servers in a better way. Another use I can thing of is a dedicated 24/7 torrenting client. there are many other ideas, but the most important thing for me is that it would enable me to learn new stuff in a better way.....