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Raspberry Pi 500+

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Re: Raspberry Pi 500+

#161

Post by pdpi »

binary132 wrote: post #62
pdpi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Savage posted a video a couple of weeks ago, where he discusses this keyboard with Ryan Norbauer. That thing is overengineered to the point I'd argue it actually becomes some sort of artistic statement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3FEv1qw4_w

Overpriced to the point that it becomes an artistic statement: “The buyer fell for it again”

That's unnecessarily negative. I'd argue it's not overpriced in the least. It's insanely pricey, of course, and that price tag comes with no real utility above and beyond what a more mundane mechanical keyboard would provide, but it's priced pretty fairly considering the costs involved.

Re: Raspberry Pi 500+

#162

Post by kondro »

vegancap wrote: post #111

I've been around long enough to find it absolutely astonishing, that you can now fit a computer with 16gb of ram, 265gb of storage and a quad core processor, with no cooling, inside a keyboard.

The iPhone Air has an A19 (50% faster than M1 in single core and 10% faster in multi-core benchmarks), 12GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage in a space no larger than the raised bar the camera sits in.

Re: Raspberry Pi 500+

#163

Post by al_be_back »

Finally, a complete modular portable desktop, made in Europe, for about $350 usd (keyboard, mouse, camera, mic, display, power supply).

I'm impressed. Although, a little late in the race to compete with US or Chinese PC makers. However, they've a good chance to influence drone and robotic computing, same goes for Arduino.

Re: Raspberry Pi 500+

#164

Post by mrheosuper »

vegancap wrote: post #111

I've been around long enough to find it absolutely astonishing, that you can now fit a computer with 16gb of ram, 265gb of storage and a quad core processor, with no cooling, inside a keyboard.

They can already fit a way faster machine, inside something that can fit in your pocket. It also comes with a very high resolution screen.

Re: Raspberry Pi 500+

#165

Post by mrheosuper »

egypturnash wrote: post #140
LiamPowell wrote: post #22

All the marketing for this advertises it as a desktop computer. What's the appeal of this compared to a cheaper and more powerful N150 NUC, or a used mini PC if it's for personal use where you just need one? A N150 has about twice the CPU performance, hardware video decoding that isn't crippled, and much more software built for its architecture among other things.

Give it to your kid. Plug it into the family TV. Let them learn to hack while you're around to answer questions. Just like when you were a baby hacker in the eighties. Less software is good - it makes kludging up your own more appealing, and there's a guide to getting started with that right there in the manual. (Or you could try plugging a goggle-mounted display into it and using it as your personal cyberdeck .)

Good news we are not in the 80s anymore. A $200 used thinkpad is much better for your kids to learn hacking. And you can use your TV when they are messing around neighborhood AP.

Re: Raspberry Pi 500+

#166

Post by mrheosuper »

ed_mercer wrote: post #144
glimshe wrote: post #24

$200 and still micro HDMI? No, thanks. Who is this product for? I've abandoned RPi after the rise of sub $200-PCs on Amazon, which usually come with power supply, on/off buttons, dual full size HDMIs, SSDs etc etc.

I have seen this comment a few times, why do people hate micro hdmi?

because it's not popular and less durable. I can forgive the use of micro hdmi on limited size product. But this computer 100% has enough space for full size hdmi.

Re: Raspberry Pi 500+

#167

Post by lvturner »

indigo945 wrote: post #44
JonChesterfield wrote: post #17

I'm confused by the use case for this. The keyboard gets a cable running to a monitor. Might need a power cable as well but let's assume usbc covers both. An alternative is a raspberry pi on the vesa mount, or attached to the monitor arm. The cable to a keyboard is now optional, wireless USB being much easier than wireless displayport. Keyboard can now be flat too. When is this a good idea?

The marketing blurb that's linked makes it quite clear that this targets retro hobbyists, who want a modern take on the C64. It's not really meant to be a practical design. It still is a more practical design than a flat keyboard, which only masochists would use willingly.

It gives me somewhat more Amiga A500 and A500+ vibes... ;)

I see it as a spiritual successor to my much loved childhood Amiga A500 which partially spurred my life long love of computing.

The GPU pins on the back are nice, as is the fact that all IO is cleanly at the back of the device.

That being said, my only real desk is almost entirely consumed by workstation/gaming PC and it's associate monitors that ironically this more convenient form-factor is less convenient for my use cases.

I have a bunch of Pi4s at home they work well as I can power them over PoE, don't spit out too much heat, have a well supported stable OS and are great for running small personal projects and workloads. (Home assistant, DNS, a few other docker containers that power things internal to my network) - sure a NUC would be more powerful, but then I have to find a way to route power in to it, and I'm running out of wall sockets!!

Re: Raspberry Pi 500+

#169

Post by ssl-3 »

bongodongobob wrote: post #155
ssl-3 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For that price, you can just use an old laptop" has been true ever since the OG Raspberry Pi showed up ~13 years ago. And that's great, and stuff, if what a person wants is the most compute they can get for the fewest dollars possible. But when someone instead wants a quite small computer that is actually friendly to hardware tinkering, and they want to buy it new, then a used Thinkpad will not scratch that itch --…

Any laptop you could buy 13 years ago for $25 would probably be parts only. So no, that's not true.

13 years ago, we only had the Raspberry Pi Model B at $35 (about $50 in today's money -- same as a 2GB Pi 5), and just as today we still needed to get all of the accoutrements in-place to make it work: A power supply that it actually works with, a case, an SD card, perhaps a wifi adapter...

My time machine is a little rusty, but all that and a breadboard was about a hundred bucks around that time: https://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1206862

Or, you know: About $150 in today's money.

$150 is plenty to buy a used PC system here in 2025 that still works, just as $100 was plenty to buy a working used system in 2012.

As a point of reference: The last used system I bought was a little Lenovo M600. It was $50, delivered, a couple of years ago.

As another point of reference: My daily-driver laptop is a Thinkpad T530 that was ~$200 (I paid a little extra for a disturbingly-clean example that included a discrete GPU and the fanciest of the screens that could be equipped).

Anyway: I saw these same discussions about pricing back when the first Pi was still new -- just on Slashdot instead of HN. People have been comparing the prices of used PC hardware to the prices of new Raspberry Pis for as long as we've had Raspberry Pis.

(And to be clear, I'm not trying to fanboy anything. This isn't Highlander: There can be more than one. I've got Raspberry Pis that do stuff, and I also have PC hardware that does stuff, and I'm OK with this.)

Re: Raspberry Pi 500+

#170

Post by kllrnohj »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #17

I'm confused by the use case for this. The keyboard gets a cable running to a monitor. Might need a power cable as well but let's assume usbc covers both. An alternative is a raspberry pi on the vesa mount, or attached to the monitor arm. The cable to a keyboard is now optional, wireless USB being much easier than wireless displayport. Keyboard can now be flat too. When is this a good idea?

> The keyboard gets a cable running to a monitor. Might need a power cable as well but let's assume usbc covers both.

Unfortunately it doesn't cover both. You do, in fact, need at minimum 2 cables connected to it - one for display & one for power. And one of those cables is, unfortunately, micro-HDMI. A super fragile port that you almost certainly don't have a cable lying around for as well.

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