Raspberry Pi 500 Review: The keyboard is the computer, again • Hacker News Board

Re: Raspberry Pi 500 Review: The keyboard is the computer, again

#131

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 15, 2024, 12:31 AM UTC

cdt5050 wrote: post #123

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but in part so the world where a lightweight low-consumption device can open some doors for connectivity and learning, this looks like a great solution I hear this repeated over and over again in RPi threads, but nobody ever provides any proof of developing nations using RPis as affordable desktop computers apart from some PR articles every now and then involving partnerships and donations. This feels more of an opi…

Nah, the lack of hardware is a real problem in developing countries, and is something that OLPC and Raspberry Pi are well suited to solve. But hardware is the easy part -- the much harder part of the problem to solve is the lack of human capital in computing education, and that's the part of the equation OLPC missed. For example, they sent hundreds of thousands of laptops to Uruguay, but they hardly got used for educ…

[deleted]

Re: Raspberry Pi 500 Review: The keyboard is the computer, again

#132

Post by hashishen » Sun, Dec 15, 2024, 1:07 AM UTC

0xEF wrote: post #19

A lot of scorn for this latest offering from Pi, but I think perspective is important here. No, most of us here do not have a use for the Pi 500 or it's display, but in part so the world where a lightweight low-consumption device can open some doors for connectivity and learning, this looks like a great solution. We tend to forget that not everyone on the planet has the same resources or needs we do.

Exactly, everyone here complaining can probably build what they're looking for on their own att the end of the day

Re: Raspberry Pi 500 Review: The keyboard is the computer, again

#133

Post by amluto » Sun, Dec 15, 2024, 3:27 AM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #41

Main oddities about the Pi 500, to me: - Designing a custom PCB for a more PC-like Pi, but then not merging the functionality of the official M.2 HAT despite plenty of available packaging space. Being able to just slot in an SSD would greatly expand the operating envelope of the product. - Sticking to Micro HDMI ports, again despite plenty of space & with everyone having standard HDMI cables already on hand, or surel…

If this cost $5 more and had the M.2 slot and some way to access it reasonably easily, I would buy one immediately. Without that, I probably won’t buy one at all.

This thing is a desktop computer. The degree to which the performance is improved by using good storage is huge. Excellent NVMe disks in the M.2 form factor are cheap and widely available. Excellent SD cards are not so easy to find. Excellent USB devices are not as good as their M.2 counterparts, are more expensive, and are sufficiently awkward dangling out the back of an RPi 400/500 that’s it’s barely worth considering.

Re: Raspberry Pi 500 Review: The keyboard is the computer, again

#134

Post by cben » Sun, Dec 15, 2024, 8:42 PM UTC

cdt5050 wrote: post #106

dagw wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

16 year old me, back when I was 16, would also have found this amazing. The thing is that today, lots of things cost less than $100 and runs linux. Go on Ebay or Facebook marketplace, and you'll find a near unlimited supply of $100 laptops that will run Linux at least as well as this will, and there you even get a screen. Go to AliExpress and you'll find mini PCs with similar specs to this for around $100, and you'll…

The Raspberry Pi has three huge advantages over those other options: 1) GPIO, letting you do things like learning to flash LEDs or controlling robotic arms and getting ready to use a Pi Zero for robots or such. 2) Cool add-ons, like the Pi Camera or AI modules, and a product family such as compute modules, Pi Zero, etc. A strong third party market of Hats, etc. 3) SUPPORT. Pi 500 is available as part of a kit with th…

Radxa X4 board specifically has x86 N100, an M.2 slot (a short one) and GPIO (though you need to flash the on-board RP2040 to access them? haven't tried yet). I'm quite happy with it as a cheap desktop. Documentation is pretty OK? Nowhere like the tutorials ecosystem around RPi but Radxa are certainly trying to provide detailed info.

One sweet quality of RPi this lacks was being unbrickable — the entire state was on SD card; screw up and you can just write a new card. (Recent RPis complicate that with an a boot flash). But by now I've bricked enough RPis by electrical damage — including an 400 — to not be as excited about that :-]

I do agree with your analysis. All I'm saying is if one is considering a competitor, the X4 with x86 running mainline linux might be a safer bet than most less-documented ARM boards...