[PLUG] PC Engines group order

[Russell Senior]

Hi folks,

Over at Personal Telco Project, we have every few years done a group
order from pcengines.ch (the ch stands for Switzerland). Pcengines is
a one-person design shop that develops and sells single-board
computers, initially a thing called the WRAP board, then the Alix and
these days the APU. They are designed to be routers with optional
miniPCI or miniPCIe interfaces for radios. The prices are good, but
the shipping has historically been around $40 per order, which is why
we've done group orders, to reduce the sting of the shipping charges.
It looks like the last group order I did was in 2016. I think we did
the first ALIX order in 2009, we did another one in 2013.

What I have done previously is to collect peoples' requests, put them
all in a spreadsheet, collect money, place the order, allocate the
shipping costs on the basis of weight (the invoice nicely details the
weight of each item in grams), and then distribute the gear when it
arrives. Depending on how well I know the person, I may want the money
in advance or may wait for money until delivery.  People from PLUG
have participated in the group order previously, which is why I'm
trolling this here now.

The main motivation for an order now for me is the APU4, which is a
4-core 64-bit x86 based board with 4 real ethernet interfaces. Most
wireless routers really only have one or maybe two ethernet interfaces
and an embedded configurable switch chip. The APUs are beefy enough to
NAT and route at gigabit speeds, so they make good gateway routers for
people with gigabit fiber services.  The APU4d4 board with 4GB of RAM
is $120. A case and power supply are a little extra.  You can find a
price list in USD here:

  https://www.pcengines.ch/newshop.php?c=4

If you see something interesting, APU or not, at pc engines and want
to participate in the order or have any questions or want references
from previous participants, please let me know.

The APU4 that I want is currently out of stock but expected later this
month. I'd expect an order placed in the next week might come in by
late in November. Previous experience is that shipping time from
Switzerland is about 3 days.

Cheers,

-- 
Russell Senior, President
russell at personaltelco.net