I decided to buy Arduino. I searched the eBay and found this item: http://goo.gl/kk8EN
Is this an official item or is it a clone? Why is price so low? How good is the quality of this item since it's location is in Hong Kong?
Thank you for your help. XD
It appears to be an Arduino Uno clone. It will probably work exactly like an official Uno.
You can get the official Uno for $29.99 here:
http://www.hobbyengineering.com/H4305.html
The picture is clearly a reproduction, which isn't necessarily bad. The Arduino platform is open source, so people are free to reproduce and modify under the open source license, and the silkscreen makes it pretty clear it isn't an 'official' Arduino.
As for the quality, it's impossible to say for sure. The fact that it's from Hong Kong doesn't automatically mean it's low quality. Nor does the fact that it's lower cost. I have no doubt that electronics production costs are much lower in Hong Kong than they are in Italy for the same level of quality.
It's a clone.
I got my Arduino Duemilanove clone from the same seller. Packaging was on the light side - it was shipped in bubble-wrap and anti-static bag only, no solid cardboard box. The USB cable was of dubious quality, so I'm using another one.
Apart from that, mine arrived from Hong Kong in just 10-12 days (YMMV) and has been working fine for a couple of months now. One of the digital pins turned out to be dead - can't say whether it was DOA or I somehow killed it later.
The price was ~1/2 of what I could find locally, so for me it was worth a shot.