Comment by celestialcheese | Hacker News Reader

Comment by celestialcheese | Hacker News Reader

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celestialcheese

It's really wild. NUCs and other mini PC's from HP/Dell are _so_ much better at similar if not cheaper prices.

My theory is that, despite the economics for using Pi's completely flipping to making it a ridiculous decision for most applications, the decade+ of tutorials, Youtube videos, forum posts, github READMEs, etc all describe using Raspberry Pi's as the way to deploy XYZ open source project is enough of a "moat" that it just keeps the demand high enough to suck up supply.

Also I don't think that people realize how good 3-5 year old technology is relative to the price. There's definitely a great arb there right now, and I think it's just going to get better.

The Raspberry Pi brand is wildly strong, but it's eroded for me because of scalpers and lack of availability - hopefully they can right the ship before it's tainted for good.

> NUCs and other mini PC's from HP/Dell are _so_ much better at similar if not cheaper prices. > the decade+ of tutorials, Youtube videos, forum posts, github READMEs, etc

While this doesn't apply so much to mini x86 PCs, most random ARM SBCs have hit or miss software support, as Jeff mentions in the article.

Admittedly, I would prefer a RPI over whatever board this article was about, if I could get one for (near) MSRP. Part of it is the price, a "$35" computer is cheap enough to fry it making a mistake, or permanently lock it in a box as a camera controller in the garage, or whatever project idea requires... then buy more for the next project.

A lot of RPI tutorials treat it more like a software appliance, where you run one thing on the device, and if you want to run a second thing you use a second RPI - more like a Linux-based microcontroller than a server. Thats only possible at the $35 price point. I have a used PC that I use as a server at home for a few things, running a 2015 i5 chip. I would never use it to just run one thing, or lock it up with a project. It basically has to sit in my house, hosting a bunch of things at once. Meanwhile I've been buying a handful of Pis since 2015, and I have them scattered over the house... one controlling smarthome stuff, one controlling the 3D printer... one in the garage... etc.

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