Pi on Display

One of the goals of the Pi was to create a computer that you could use immediately without making much additional costs because you could use peripherals that were available anyway. Now the situation in the UK may be different but there's hardly a surplus of HDMI displays here. (Unused-) VGA displays however are everywhere but not supported by the Pi.

After reading that converting HDMI to VGA is rather complicated because it requires conversion from digital to analogue I started to fear the a suitable converter would probably cost much more than the Pi itself. And indeed most available converters look like this and cost between 40 and 200 dollars ! (2015 UPDATE: Though the link above is still valid, the price of the device has gone down to US$17,- ! Things still move fast in tech-space.)
So when I found this simple 'HDMI V1.4 Male to VGA Female Converter Adapter Cable' at DealExtreme I was a little sceptical. Would a $19,- cable, shipped for free from China, really do the same ? Since $19 is not too much money I decided to take a chance and placed my first order with this Chinese company. Ordering is very simple and within a few clicks the money is transferred from your creditcard to the other end of the world. And then the waiting starts. As mentioned on their website delivery can take upto 15 working days. Which just means three long weeks. And when its shipped through China Post there is just no way you can check the status of your shipment. Even though they have a site where you can enter the tracking number it never seemed to work for me. This is a very common complaint on many forums. The most valuable advice I found was to mark the expected delivery date on your calendar and not think about it until this date has passed. Which is true. Only just before the three weeks has passed the package arrives.
And most important: it works fine. I connected it to an old 1024 x 768 LCD monitor and the text and images appear crisp and clear.