[GRLUG] another Raspberry Pi article

[Bob Kline]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 8:51 AM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 8:34 AM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Re $25 and $35, and earlier item here
> > said there are two versions - the differences
> > escape me just now.
> >
> > Just playing devil's advocate, I'll ask
> > where's the beef?  By the time you hang
> > enough stuff on the board to do anything
> > with it there won't be any cost saving to
> > speak of.  One can get any number of
> > great motherboards for under $100 today.
> >
> > Just asking.....
>
> Personally, I think the Raspberry Pi is way, way overhyped, but it
> does sound like a nice little board.
>
> The beef is:
>
> 1) It's very cheap for what it does.
> 2) It's special-purpose. The feature set suggests it's designed to
> make a quick, easy, hobbyist's HTPC. Hardware decoding of h.264 will
> make that seamless.
> 3) It's ARM-based, which means its performance-per-watt is going to
> kick any x86-based competitor to the nearest Freecycle group. Low
> power consumption is something you really, really want in an HTPC.
> 4) As a combination of (2) and (3), it's very small.
> (5) At $35, nobody's going to complain too much when technology shifts
> and the demands of an HTPC outgrow it. It's nearly disposable.
>

That should all work just fine for hobbyists.
There are clearly all shades of gray of hardware
out there, going from embedded setups to
conventional motherboards.  Years ago I used
to wire-wrap prototype boards.

I think some of the virtues above might be
fine for production boards - e.g., power
consumption - but even for a hobbyist the
cost savings overall will be in the noise compared
to the time involved.  It is cheap as custom
boards go.

Anyway, some will fine the board useful.
At least the company behind them things so,
and by definition, anyone that buys one.

    -- Bob

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20111129/889caf9d/attachment.html>