100 USD
https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/
$70
Raspberry Pi 400: the $70 desktop PC
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-400-the-70-desktop-pc/
<+>
Raspberry Pi 400 Review: Faster CPU, New Layout, Better Thermals | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-400-review-faster-cpu-new-layout-better-thermals
$70 is really an incredibly low price. I'd like to play with one and see how usable it is. I'm curious about overheating, the quality of the keyboard. Given that it is a Linux OS and there isn't an option for a swap drive on an SD card it would be nice to have 8GB of ram. Maybe they'll come out with an 8GB option soon for a little more money.
What kind of 'laptop-like' screen is available for this? With a nice screen, it'd work pretty well as a travel browser.
The Pi uses micro HDMI ports, so you could buy a travel monitor and just plug it in -- the lowest cost I've seen for them is like $65, but most of them seem to be $100 - $200.
Like so:
Elecrow 13.3 Inch Raspberry Pi Display Portable Monitor 1920X1080 IPS with Dual Mini HDMI External Monitor Compatible with Raspberry Pi Game Console Win PC
https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-1920X1080-Resolution-Portable-Speakers/dp/B0787RF8YB/143-7073848-6341445
But this puts it near the price range of chromebooks.
A video review. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1E5xszQqV8)
I'm in the process of putting together a Pi 4 8gb desktop. It has an aluminum case for passive cooling and will boot from an M.2 SSD via the USB 3 connection. It will be slightly overclocked. I'm planning on using it for most of my desktop work; it should be fine for 99% of what I do.
I have people, mostly family members, email me for advice about getting or replacing a laptop. If they want 'cheap' -most do- then I try to steer them to Chromebooks. Most are afraid to leave Windows. The majority of them are just browsing, and I've been thinking that if they really want cheap they should go to RPi-based systems.
Yeah, it should work for that, but I am not sure it's a better choice for someone who isn't tech oriented. I wouldn't set this up form my mother. For me the big advantage is that it's a native Linux environment attached to a full screen without all the power consumption (and noise) of a conventional desktop.
This is the case I'm using (https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-m-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-4.html), if anybody is interested.
Nice case. Somehow, I hate paying more for the enclosure that I'd pay for the computer.
I once set up an earlier Pi as the desktop for a motorhome. It was going to be just for browsing and, IIRC, I was using Chrome. All the user needs to know is how to get the browser shortcut. From there, it's all familiar. But you are correct, most would bristle at the thought of the unknown and quit without trying.
Quote from: littleman on January 10, 2021, 11:04:43 PM
This is the case I'm using (https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-m-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-4.html), if anybody is interested.
Actually, I was just about to ask about form factor. Thanks
Yeah, there are cases for the Pi that are like $5 and work fine. At $45 this one is on the higher end, but it is more than just a case, it has the built in heat sink, an attachment board that moves all the side IO to the back and has that USB 3 to m.2 ssd board on the bottom which makes it about the most compact way to run the pi with a hard drive. The ssd really speeds up the boot program loading times.
I wasn't set on using a Pi, but it turns out that this combination is a fairly low cost way to build a low energy silent computer. I use to run a mini-itx for the same reason, but the Pi parts accomplish the same results for a lot less.
>At $45 this one is on the higher end
Oh, I'm not saying that I wouldn't buy a high-end case ...I just hate the irony of the case being the expensive part of the setup.
>mini-itx
Yeah, I remember.
>Pi 4
Is 8gb going to be enough?
Quote from: rcjordan on January 11, 2021, 01:23:37 AM
Is 8gb going to be enough?
Can you go higher? I thought they topped out at 8GB
> I thought they topped out at 8GB
I wondered if that was the case, but I'm guns-shy because of Win.
I've worked with far less ram, 8gb should be fine for me. I don't do any video editing and I don't play 3d games. Picture editing, spreadsheets, scripts and browser should all be fine with 8gb.
>8gb should be fine for me
So far I haven't cracked over 2GB of ram in daily use with several applications open. The standard RPi OS is pretty well optimized. I wasn't crazy about the default look, but I think I've got it looking more to my liking now.
That is awesome! What did the who lot cost you in the end?
Case: Argon ONE M.2 = $45
Board: Raspberry Pi 4 - 8GB = $75
M.2 Drive: 256GB = $30.99
Power Supply: 5.25v 3A USB-C = $10
About $164 as it sits, but I really don't think the 8GB Pi board is necessary. A 4GB model would be $20 less. I have the Pi overclocked to 2Ghz and everything is very responsive at that level, the default OS is very well optimized to be resource efficient.
impressed.
Deep geek question... do you have a Kill-o-watt or similar meter that lets you measure power consumption? I'm curious what the power draw is.
That would be cool. Doing the math on the power supply gives us 15.75 watts which would be max consumption.
A question I've asked myself is how long it will take to offset it's own carbon footprint with reduced power consumption -- not an easy question to answer.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Kill-A-Watt-Electricity-Monitor-P4400/202196386
Kind of a geeky thing. I do not even remember how or why I have one, but I go through phases where I don't use it for a year, and then I start measuring laptops and monitors and TV in sleep mode and so forth (conclusion: most modern devices are actually extremely efficient when in sleep/standby).
I'll probably buy a Kill-o-watt eventually.
According to this article (https://raspi.tv/2019/how-much-power-does-the-pi4b-use-power-measurements) the Pi4 board uses 2.85 Watts while idle and 4.425 Watts at high load. M.2 SSDs draw between 200 and 600 milliwatts.
>Kill-o-watt
It's pretty handy. (There's one lying on the kitchen counter now. Been there a couple of weeks. hhh) I use it and an ammeter to measure likely loads on the circuits we use when we switch to the emergency generator. Also, once I determine the load of small appliance that is routinely used I make a small label and stick it on the back. That way, I don't have to keep answering "Can I run this and this at the same time?"
>OT
I have a couple of computers, some now getting old, that I only rarely turn off. I should slap the Kill-o-watt on those.
Wow... that's less than most routers. Much less than most full-featured routers. That's really cool.
>> OT
I don't know how old is old, but my seven... maybe eight year old i7 laptop with a separate Nvidia graphics card, and old spinning platter hard drive and all that draws almost nothing in sleep mode. I used to feel like if I were a good person, I would turn it off.
After running the Kill-o-watt on it for a few nights, I realized that a single session in the sauna (5KW heater that runs for 40 mins for a nice sauna session) is more power than my laptop will draw in sleep mode before the sun supernovas (maybe not quite, but I quit feeling guilty about it). In other words, I realized that off all the things I could do to save energy, worrying about whether my laptop is in "sleep" or "shutdown" is basically irrelevant.
Good to know Ergo, with the kids in at-home school all day there are a lot of laptops running in the house right now. How much did the i7 laptop draw when in use at peak and idle?
For my two youngest I bought them refurbished i5 thinkpads with upgraded ram and SSDs; their surprisingly snappy. I like the old thinkpads because they are just about the most serviceable laptops out there.
Just plunking along it uses anything from 25 to 45 watts, mostly around 25-35 watts.
When I put it to sleep, it spikes as high as 68 watts as it writes everything from memory to persistent memory, but then it drops to 0.4-0.5 watts. So less than most LED night lights. It's not zero, but again the 5KW heater is literally 10,000 times as much. So one sauna = 10 months of my computer on standby.
I'm trying to do something that will get the hard drive running but it won't. I'm guessing with the fan running, the CPU going all out and the hard drive spinning, it would get up to 60 watts. I have to find some poorly-written Javascript page... that seems to really get everything going.
PS - one thing about a laptop is that there is charge/discharge from the battery. To get really good numbers, I think I would need to take the battery out.
Microsoft's Visual Studio Code come to Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi Finally Gets a Great Text Editor—From Microsoft – Review Geek
https://www.reviewgeek.com/71050/raspberry-pi-finally-gets-a-great-text-editor-from-microsoft/
Adding M$ repose to the Pi has been quite the controversy over in the Rpi forums.
Probably old news for you LM, but
Official Raspberry Pi Support Arrives For Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime on Pi Day
https://blog.adafruit.com/2021/03/19/official-raspberry-pi-support-arrives-for-netflix-hulu-amazon-prime-piday-raspberrypi-raspberry_pi/
This is sort of news to me. There has been a community based solution for a while. There is an application called "Pi Apps" that is part of the official OS, but is run by volunteers. In the Pi Apps repository there has been a widevine compatible version of Chromium for several months. I guess someone at the Pi foundation decided to just incorporate it into the main distro now. BTW, widevine is only available on the 32bit OS, so far no one has been able to make it work with 64bit version yet.
Quote from: littleman on February 04, 2021, 07:05:43 PMCase: Argon ONE M.2 = $45
Board: Raspberry Pi 4 - 8GB = $75
M.2 Drive: 256GB = $30.99
Power Supply: 5.25v 3A USB-C = $10
About $164 as it sits, but I really don't think the 8GB Pi board is necessary. A 4GB model would be $20 less. I have the Pi overclocked to 2Ghz and everything is very responsive at that level, the default OS is very well optimized to be resource efficient.
Just wanted to say that this is still my daily driver and it is still working very nicely for my needs. It's challenging to calculate the electricity cost savings exactly, but it's likely somewhere between $250 and $350 over the time so far.
Sitting here on battery power with our fourth power outage of the week (this one 26 hours and counting)... makes me think about getting more efficient. I suspect a new monitor would be the bigger prize though