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Comment by OhMeadhbh | Hacker News Reader

Sure... but... the original $35 RasPi is closer to a modern RasPi Zero 1, which looks like it's selling for $45 - $50 on Amazon.

Modern top-of-the-line RasPis seem more like ARM PCs with fast, efficient multi-core CPUs and GigE. I bought a RasPi 500 at the beginning of the year just to see what it was like and it's my new "email and light web browsing" daily-driver. Though yeah, I probably wouldn't have paid $410 for it.

I bought my original RasPi mostly for the I/O. I wanted to blink some lights, drive some servos. And if I wanted to do that again, I would probably buy a Pico or Zero.

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> Sure... but... the original $35 RasPi is closer to a modern RasPi Zero 1, which looks like it's selling for $45 - $50 on Amazon.

You want the Pi Zero 2 W, which is under $20 when it's in stock.

You also need to buy somewhere other than Amazon, which is where sellers go to unload their inventory at exorbitant prices between restocks.

Absolutely. Amazon isn't the go-to place to pick up electronics. I think I picked it because prices there are probably the highest you'll reasonably find for Pi stuff. Though they often have availability when everyone else is out of stock (likely because they have a bit more mark up than most everyone else.)

> Sure... but... the original $35 RasPi is closer to a modern RasPi Zero 1, which looks like it's selling for $45 - $50 on Amazon.

Yeah, because a second-hand 13-year-old computer is gonna last quite a long time.

A 13 year old computer is gonna use a lot more power than a RPi, that's for sure.

You would think... but if you don't have to run the 13 year old computer at full tilt, then the power difference may be minimal. The LEON SoS SPARC clones I used wound up consuming MUCH less power than modern intel cores.

And CPU power consumption is only part of the whole system. And a lot of the system power scales with bus speed rather than inverse CPU age. It's possible recent systems will consume more electrons than older systems.

>but if you don't have to run the 13 year old computer at full tilt

Except that modern apps and modern websites can be so demanding compared to their vintage counterparts, that they'll rev an old CPU at full tilt for basic modern tasks, while for a new CPU will seem to be idling at the same tasks.

Just try watching 1080p AV1 youtube videos on a vintage CPU vs one with dedicated AV1 decoder and you'll see what I mean. Yes I know h264ify exists, but its existence only reinforces my point.

I have an core 2 quad CPU at my parents place and simply browsing the web (with adblocking enabled even) pegs it at 100% most of the time sucking >90W. Meanwhile a mid level android phone barely breaks a sweat sipping battery on the same tasks.

I don't run web browsers on my satellites or missile control systems. Guess we all have different applications. I also run most of my apps from the command line in the terminal. I just don't use the modern web that much.

I have a 60 year old computer attached to my Minuteman III and it's doing fine. A 13 year old computer that still works is a computer that still works. And if it's worked 13 years, then it might last another 13 years (unlike the Intel NUC that died after 18 months.)

Your /what/?

When you say, "my" do you mean "my personal property" and by "Minuteman III" are we talking about the missile?

Ignoring all of that for a second, and focusing on the generalized sentiment:

    I have a 60 year old computer attached to my 
    [...] and it's doing fine

Well, I'm a huge fan of that, but that seems like a fixed-purpose system. What a lot of people want from personal computers is the flexibility of doing fun and new things: new software, games, whatever.

Even "browsing the web" is (highly unfortunately) not a fixed purpose, as web standards evolve and pages (highly unfortunately) get heavier and more JS-dependent.

"My" as in the one I until recently responsible for. While I enjoy tinkering, I don't need a missile silo communications system in my home.

Yeah, but the pages that use all the new fangled stuff are pages I don't really use. I'm sort of a fan of text. Whenever I have to launch X and start a modern browser, it sort of hurts my eyes. Whenever I want to do something fun, I launch MacOS 9 on my G3 iBook and monkey around with Hypercard. It runs just fine.

Also... https://youtu.be/bXEbZdP6i-0?t=4283

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