Raspberry Pi 5: available now

If that's not an option AND your setup has no power issues (e.g. it has good power supply, externally powered usb hub etc), disabling journalling might also improve performance: tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sdaXXX (can't do it on mounted fs, so either do it from initram consolee, do pivot_root to minimal fs in ram, or do it from another machine)

Usually an SBC is just one item on a project's part list. If I can get one that's equally suitable and 20 Euro less, that's another bunch of sensors, or another smart light, or a few additional PCBs, or a spool of filament, or another display, or other peripheral, or another filter for my photography kit.

> Is there some missing context here, like "...and they only have ten dollars to spend on hobbies during the entirety of 2023 due to the famine wracking their homeland?"

People in that kind of situation will probably not be looking at a Pi 5 for a hobby project. A lot of people are better off than that and still not in a place where a hundred dollars here and there isn't even worth thinking about. I try to limit hobby expenses because that allows me to have more projects and play with more things without cutting into anything more important.

> Hobbyists spent, at times, thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on microcomputers in the eighties, and that was real money back then. Even the quaint ZX whatevers that were sold in Europe were, in inflation-adjusted terms, much more expensive than a Pi.

At least for the things I do, that's a wildly inaccurate comparison. A Pi is more like a drop-in part like an electrical component would have been back in the 80s, and most hobbyists would not have paid thousands for a specialized diode or the like, and most wouldn't have bought another personal computer for a new project. The closest analog to a proper computer back then would be my laptop, and I did pay "real money" for that. I don't buy Pis as standalone personal computing devices, they're for automation that I can't or don't want to fit on a microcontroller. Two Pi 4s are running Home Assistant deployments, another (zero W) is driving an e-ink info screen, one Pi 3-something sits inside a half-assembled robotics kit, I had another 3-something running OctoPrint until recently. If I had to pay "real money" for any of those, I'd just do without.

[0] The test on the page looks like "AVAILABLE" and copies as " Available on Nov 03,2023 "

These low-cost SBCs are often viewed as a gateway product for introducing people to technology they wouldn't otherwise have access to - a system that could be a serviceable PC or launchpad for hobby electronics. The hobbyists you mention, apparently flush with cash and not a care in the world, aren't the people who need the price break. It's low income families with kids that need access to resources that might lead to a better future.

Not to mention that a Raspberry Pi is an embeddable system. It might be a small part of a much larger project, so even a low price might be hard to justify.

But no, let's keep making everything expensive so that computers and technology careers are only accessible to families that already have wealth. We, the Hobbyists of lore, can strut about the city square in our wearable devices and augmented reality headsets while the dirty street urchins scramble behind us, hoping for a fallen scrap, a loose semiconductor or relay they can take home to their families so they might afford little Timmy's leg surgery...