Use the Pi for what it's marketed as: A cheap computer to learn programming on. It's meant to be tinkering-friendly and cheap before reliable, and I think it do

Use the Pi for what it's marketed as: A cheap computer to learn programming on. It's meant to be tinkering-friendly and cheap before reliable, and I think it does those well. I think you put too much emphasis on reliability and too little on convenience, easy access to hardware-specific help from a large community, and the ability to easily talk to external hardware in a microcontroller-ish way. There are things I would always use an ARM SBC for. There are things I would never use an ARM SBC for (but that other people apparently would/do). I'll keep the ECS systems in mind for future recommendations, though. For anyone that doesn't need the hardware interfaces and doesn't have some external requirement (from a class, etc), they look nice. Do you have a reliable source for the 2/32 Liva X systems at the $85 price point? Amazon and Newegg both are more expensive, at the moment. Slickdeals had a $40 MIR listed (bringing $115 down to $75), but that was last March, and doesn't help me much if I want the hardware now.