Following the news that the Raspberry Pi foundation was auctioning 10 of the beta model B boards on eBay comes the news a lot of people have been waiting for: they've started manufacturing the production models! The Raspberry Pi blog has all the details.
This exciting news is accompanied by the slight disappointment (for those of us in the UK) that they won't be made in old Blighty. Cost, turnaround and (as practically every UK citizen will appreciate) most of all high taxes have meant that the foundation has had to look to the far east to make the units for them.
They do hope the Alpha boards will have less demand and will therefore be able to be made in the UK but for now, making 10,000 units in as short as time as possible while keeping the costs within target is apparently just not possible if they are manufactured in the UK. This probably says more about the state of the UK than anything about the Raspberry Pi foundation and I am not blaming Raspberry Pi at all. It's still a bit of a disappointment that a project many of us hope could rekindle some grass-roots computing culture here will not be made in the UK.
Regardless of that it looks like the wait for production models will soon be over.