I can assure you, even if you buy well and minimize it, there is still need to play with drivers to get wifi working. (It doesn't have on board wifi, not sure if you know that from your post). I mean, mine was as simple as a single modprobe, but that's because I was using raspbian and not the stock image or the XBMC builds.
Hrm, I was under the impression it had built-in wifi, but, as far as firmware/software, almost all of the usages in my list would probably be done by the type of person (e.g. me) who would re-image the boot sd card with his own distro anyway, so drivers would be an issue for the first image, but the nth (assuming the same wifi dongle) would be 0 extra cost.
I'm using the Arch image and a ZyXEL NWD2105. Worked with absolutely no problems OOTB - well after installing the wireless_tools package. Didn't even need an external powered USB hub.
Ironically, put DD-WRT on the Asus 330GE and you have a device that is very roughly equivalent to the RasberryPi (excluding the Pi's graphics abilities)
Weird. I'd been assuming it had WiFi...been a while since I'd read the specs. That makes it much less useful, IMHO, though I still like the low power nature of the device. But you can get many more powerful android devices for about $70 that have WiFi, more ram, multiple cores, and more expansion options. Not to say I won't buy one, just that I won't buy a bunch of them, since WiFi is absolutely vital for the home automation projects I had in mind.
That doesn't make sense to me, I mean they can sell usb wifi dongles for less than $10, presumably profitably, so I would presume they could add wifi to the RP board for pretty cheap. What am I missing?
Probably that they're still trying to make it under $35 and get it out the door. Keep in mind that this is technically their first model, they probably wanted to keep things simple for a first release.
ethernet is relatively stable, whereas new wireless protocols and upgrades come out all the time. I would rather have wireless through usb or as a component of a daughterboard via the onboard bus, than soldered onto the board.
>ethernet is relatively stable, whereas new wireless protocols and upgrades come out all the time
I can't really agree with this line of thought:
802.11a - 1999 (5GHz)
802.11b - 1999 (2.4GHz)
802.11g - 2003 (2.4GHz)
802.11n - 2009 (2.4GHz + 5GHz)
802.11ac - 2012 (5GHz)
The only new standard on the immediate horizon is 802.11ac, and that's targeted strictly at the 5GHz band. Additionally, all the 2.4GHz stuff is backwards compatible all the way back to the old 802.11b standard.
Things certainly change, but it's more in the range of once every 4-5 years than it is all the time. There are good reasons not to include wifi on-board on the pi, but I don't see that as being one of them.
Getting CE/FCC approval for wifi is expensive and time consuming.
It also normally requires you to either get emmisions tests for the complete system or you can use a separate WIFI module - which is why most laptops have wifi on mini-pci cards.
Of course if you want to make a no-name $5 usb wifi dongle and just print CE on it that's a lot cheaper.
