The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently sold its five millionth microcomputer en route to becoming the best-selling computer manufacturer in the UK.

That figure pales in comparison to some of the world's major PC makers like Acer, Dell and Lenovo but it is quite remarkable considering it just passed the two million units sold mark only 15 months ago and only ever anticipated selling a few thousand units over its lifetime.

The original Raspberry Pi went on sale in February of 2012, selling out in a matter of minutes. The initial surge of traffic crashed the company's website. One of its distributors, Premier Farnell, said at the time that orders were coming in at a blistering 700 per second by the end of the first week of availability.

In November 2013, the foundation revealed it had crossed the two million units sold milestone.

Not content to rest on its laurels, the foundation has released multiple revisions over the years. Its latest board, the Raspberry Pi 2, launched earlier this month with a speedier quad-core CPU and more RAM. What really makes the Pi 2 special is its ability to run Windows 10 which will be free for its owners (and free for most everyone else, too).

The Pi 2 isn't without its flaws, however, as a recent hardware bug demonstrated. Firing a xenon-based camera flash or a laser pointer at the bare board will cause a brief lapse in power which is enough to reboot the computer.