Presenting the BB at my local hacker space

I'll be doing a presentation on the BeagleBone in a couple of weeks at my local hacker space.

To help me prepare relevant and interesting content (beyond the obvious architecture overview and feature list, white vs black), I would like to know what you would have liked to know about the BB before you purchased it. What do you like about it? What has not worked as expected? What are your favorite resources? What is the first thing you brag about when introducing a friend to your BB?

And if you happen to have some PPT slides on the topic you'd like to share, I'd appreciate -- with full attribution of course.

Thank you in advance,

jb

Be sure and tell everyone that the little white card in the box has a very useful URL on it. You will find that if you use it, a lot of your questions can be answered. And thee is plenty to read about the board before you buy it.

http://circuitco.com/support/BeagleBoneBlack

Gerald

You might get some benefit from the slides at BeagleBoard.org - sxsw

I like the Beaglebone black as is, but what I would liked to have seen on it from a pure hardware “tweaker” standpoint is GbE Ethernet. Mainly this is from the perspective of netbooting, but could have come in handy for a few other things as well. Including driving the price of the BBB higher . . . which of course is why I am happy with the BBB as is in this one respect.

Also, the OSHW / OSS community behind the BBB is amazing. The hardware / and software still needs some time to mature I think, but honestly I can say there is nothing that I personally absolutely need. That is that does not already exist. For control type applications, at least on a hobbyist level, I think the BBB fits the bill just fine. And then some.

As far as the white goes . . . I have no hands on there. As this is my first personal foray into embedded Linux, as well as any hardware of this type, or complexity.