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Tell HN: Don't waste your money on a Raspberry Pi

7 points by norasppi ↗ HN
The Raspberry Pi forum is currently down on the day they start selling it- uh, I mean allowing you to again express interest in it, via a vendor this time, because they had to switch to a static site, and forgot to make the forum available: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum

If you've spent much time on the forum, you've seen that it isn't all it is cracked up to be. You are spending £21.60 on caseless slow computer using ARM that has not been tested adequately in beta and that has to be hooked up via HDMI to be much good. So basically, it is a crappy, overly slow, wrong architecture, barebones media streaming computer. If you want to spend that much money, spend a little more and get a full system that is faster and more useful.

20 comments

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dragonbonheur
It would make one hell of a video game system. It would be great for developing countries. It would be great to learn embedded software or operating system design. It would be great to learn compiler or interpreter design. It could drive netbook prices down. Anyone could make his own tablet thanks to it being caseless. Anyone could build massively parallel clusters by connecting a bunch of them through ethernet. By hooking up a micro projector, a usb camera and a microphone one could easily have a SixthSense capable device. In short: I want one.
pavlov
... has to be hooked up via HDMI to be much good.

As if that's a downside in a computer that costs less than 30 euros?

Price comparison: if I spend 30 € at an Apple retailer, I get a DisplayPort->HDMI adapter. It doesn't include an ARM-based computer at all.

mrkmcknz
I agree, in the UK all I'm hearing is this will help kids program.

I'm sorry but any computer and Codecademy will do that.

It's a poor piece of hardware that is using its price point as the trump card. However, I don't think expensive hardware is the problem.

ja27
It's not an end-user device yet. A lot of people are jumping on this as a cheap media center PC and they'll be disappointed. But there are plenty of us that want to stick a battery pack on it and put it in a robot or something more fun.
54mf
Why disappointed? It runs XMBC and decodes 1080p. That's pretty much all I need from a media center PC.
Rhapso
I think they will be a little horrified, but everybody I talk to in my peer group, and myself want one for embedded development.
to3m
"If you want to spend that much money"?

£21.60 is not a great deal of money - but even if it was, it still won't buy you much ;)

seclorum
I agree that this thing is underpowered - a Beagleboard would be a better investment, since its at least beefy enough to support having its own development environment onboard. I run mine as a normal Linux workstation, no cross-compiling required, gcc+cscope+vim+gdb is onboard of course, and its been a productive environment for years ..
msh
could you please expand on this?

I find the idea interesting, how normal is it as a workstation? Can you run X with a windowmanager and a graphical browser at a decent speed?

seclorum
I use my Beagleboard like a normal Linux workstation - yes, it runs X (has 3D acceleration also), the browser runs quite fine, and I have all the normal development tools onboard. The Beagleboard is quite a capable little computer, and for us old-timer Linux guys, is more than enough horsepower for a bit of compiling here and there. As someone who cut his teeth on Linux by compiling the kernel and X server on a 386 with 8Megs of RAM, I'm not in the least bit swayed by "its too slow to do anything serious!" comments .. in fact, its quite fast enough to do quite serious things, as long as you pick your tools wisely, and don't expect to run a massive bloaty IDE like Eclipse or something ..
jgrahamc
I disagree and will happily be buying one for the low price. As a hobbyist I don't have any problem with the 'limitations' that you point out. The low price point makes it interesting and the combination of networking, video and GPIO makes it look like flexible device. Equally the case is not a problem (in fact, it's an advantage since I'll be burying my Raspberry Pis inside other things).

I'm not sure what's wrong with HDMI: my MacBook Pro connects to my monitor with HDMI as that's what the monitor supports. ARM architecture seems fine on every phone out there (and elsewhere) and as I'll likely be programming small programs in C for the device I don't think the architecture is going to get in my way.

As for speed considerations I've done a lot of things with Arduino and they are _slow_ compared to Raspberry Pi.

lucvh
If we could just make numbers cheaper teaching kids maths would become easier too.
54mf
"So basically, it is a crappy, overly slow, wrong architecture, barebones media streaming computer."

Funny, that's exactly why I want to buy one. Have you priced set-top boxes lately? The cheapest Roku won't stream from another machine on your network and can't do 1080. Apple TV can't even to MKV for $100!

I'm really not sure why you posted this. On the surface, it sounds like you're jealous. Judging by your username "norasppi", I have to assume you're trying to protect your identity, which would lead me to think you're working on/for a more expensive competitor and are bitter that Raspberry Pi is seeing so much success. All smells really fishy to me.

At the very least, do you have a better alternative with comparable specs for the same price? Complaining without providing a solution is probably my least favorite thing ever.

dkhenry
Incendiary Title - Check Baseless Accusations - Check Assumption of alternatives with none provided - Check

There is nothing of value or worth in this post. It is flamebait. Please don't feed the trolls.

soltysh
I recently found something similar, yet on one side powerful (bigger CPU, more RAM), on the other less accessible (only HDMI and USB interfeace). It's called CStick -> http://www.cstick.com/ yet it's cost is about 100$. If someone is interested...
jacknews
Actually it's $200. People can diss the raspberry pi as outdated, underpowered or whatever, but it's good enough, and $30 is revolutionary - the key is it's pocket money.
noxn
I plan on running one as a headless server at home, yknow, a bit of file storage and whatever I can manage to put on it, not just because of the low price but because it draws a lot less power than my current setup.

35€ for something I can tinker with and basically leave running all day is pretty good. Not to mention at that price I can easily replace it.

jacknews
a little more, or a lot more?
jefe78
Right, because ~$20 is a lot of money for an embeddable device. If you're looking at this as a desktop replacement/barebones media streamer, then your post might have SOME merit. But frankly, most of us have other plans for these little guys. You sound bitter for some reason.
noonespecial
I think maybe you missed the point. Its not supposed to replace the P4 with an 80 gig SATA you found on ebay for $50. Its a computer that you can program with a ruby on rails stack for the price of an Arduino. Its the same size too.

It doesn't replace your laptop, it replaces your Arduino. Your hardware projects just got awesome spilled all over them.