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Raspberry Pi update

RS Components. Note: I was in the "second-in-line" queue; the ones who didn't manage to order / pre-order on launch day.
 
I understand the excitement but don't understand the hysteria around the Pi. You can get all that it does in a similar size board today just a bit more expensive. It's just the first to do it at that price point. And like all technology cost downs, it will be far from the last.
 
eeguru said:
I understand the excitement but don't understand the hysteria around the Pi. You can get all that it does in a similar size board today just a bit more expensive. It's just the first to do it at that price point. And like all technology cost downs, it will be far from the last.
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What other options are shipping for a similar price point?

I must be missing something, but I can't find anything comparable on size/performance for less than twice the price. There is a huge difference in perception between $70+ and $35.
 
eeguru said:
That's probably where I'm not seeing it. To me they're both sub-100. Perception.
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For me, for something to "play with", $35 base is great. If I was actually trying to do something for a client, the price isn't the deciding factor. Availability and function are.

For personal use, I am one cheap SOB (for the non americans in the list, that just means I'm cheap and I'm dumb/mean about it).
 
I'll admit, the hype for me is just the price. $35 is a hobbyist/budget system for hacking on. Higher than that gets expensive if it doesn't do what you're looking for. $35 shipped if I could find one I'd order one. $35 + shipping makes it less attractive, but again it's just the promised hackability and price AFAIK that has folks intrigued. So many folks have come out with low priced announcements but never result in the actual product or once the product comes out it goes back to a competitive and less friendly price.
 
As far as I know it's only available in the PC platform, nothing Arm released to the public yet. The ARM version will probably only be offered to OEMs though, not the general public as it probably needs modifying to run on each specific device.
 
Ah. I really know nothing of ARM technology, all I know is that whenever I try to run 16-BIT programs, it says to check if I am on a 32, 64, or ARM CPU instead of just 32 or 64
 
Also keep in mind this is an ARM v6 architecture. v7 ARM will not run on it (eg for Cortex series).

ARM11s are also quite a bit slower in instruction efficiency verses the current crop of A8, A9, A15s. You can certainly run a desktop on it.. possibly a full featured Browser respectably. But the host CPU performance will leave a lot to be desired. There are many media rich sites that will bring it to it's knees if the VPU can't be invoked for playback. Think of it as a P2/P3 equivalent. Maybe slightly slower since it doesn't have much cache.
 
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