If you are located in a territory where there is an existing Marvell partner, we advise you to go direct to the appropriate partner.
New IT has acted in partnership with GlobalScale Technologies to bring the SheevaPlug to Europe. Up until now, the only way that European customers could purchase a SheevaPlug was by importing from the U.S.A. The cost of shipping is significant (almost 50% of the cost of the unit), and purchasers have been shocked to receive additional invoices (often several weeks after receipt of the product) for import duties or taxes (17.5% VAT in the UK, for instance, plus the handling fee of the courier that collects that fee). None of these difficult-to-swallow costs can be avoided... except by importing in bulk and distributing within a new territory. We are exclusive distributors of the SheevaPlug in Europe.
Our shop prices include VAT, but do not forget to allow for any import duties, and if you would like a personalised quote (there are many choices of shipping method, not all the options are listed on our shop site), please drop a line to sales@newit.co.uk and tell us the quantity you are interested in purchasing, and the country to which you would like your SheevaPlug(s) delivered.
In addition, New IT is adding value to the product:
We are providing a support site where you can ask for advice with your SheevaPlug, and discuss projects that you would like us to support.
We also offer configuration options for your plug, a choice of OS on an SD card, and in time we are looking to supply a choice of preinstalled aplications, so that when your purchase arrives, it is already pre-configured with particular applications. The forum will be a good place for us all to gauge the popularity of particular features (the SheevaPlug is customisable in so many ways, we can't give all the possibilities here), so please visit the forum and join in.
We will test the compatibility of some of the most common accessories that you might like to connect to your SheevaPlug - for instance USB wireless sticks - and help you configure them. We're looking in to providing alternative boot options (i.e. SD card or USB stick) at the time of purchase, but for now we know there is plenty of information on these topics online.
So, for the moment, if you can see the potential of owning a SheevaPlug, and you feel confident that you can configure it to run useful applications - with or without our help - please compare our prices with the costs of importing.