4 ms·

> Nowadays I've moved on to administrating bigger systems, and the Raspberry Pi's value proposition has cooled off somewhat (the Pi Zero is still neat, though).

> Nowadays I've moved on to administrating bigger systems, and the Raspberry Pi's value proposition has cooled off somewhat (the Pi Zero is still neat, though). Has it? The Pi 4 is incredible value for money. Barely needs any compromises. Stick it in a case (Argon Neo!), stick it on top of a UASP disk caddy... a whole emergency desktop computer for really almost every normal use.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
By the time you've added enough components to make it fully functional, it's up to the price range of a used machine off eBay or even some new chromebooks
- user_7832 5y ago
  I think that's a fundamental issue with a lot of these basic electronics. A significant % of the cost is on packaging/markup/distribution when the chip itself is so cheap. I frequently see old mini-PCs with i3s and it's for ~100EUR. Even a 4th gen i3 is going to be way more powerful than a Pi, the only thing going for the Pi is probably newer faster memory. IMO the best use case for the Pi is buying 10 Pi-zeros at a discount and putting them on a moderately-heavy task that needs them to run off a battery.
- _ea1k 5y ago
  That's true, although I think it is also getting to the point that it is at least as powerful as some of those cheap Chromebooks. Most of those don't even have 8 GB of RAM like the latest Pi 4. It seems like whatever Pi comes next might pass some of these.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    The 8gb Pi 4 is crazily good value for money, but one of the striking things about the Pi OS is that you barely need the 8gb ever. The 4gb machine is fine for almost everyone, as is a £5 case, £10 UASP caddy and a £20 120gb SSD. And _then_ if you don't have stuff lying around, you go onto eBay looking for bits. Mice, keyboards, whatever. At some point I need to upgrade my secondhand MacBook Pro. In the back of my mind I always the idea of "which is the cheapest Mac I could use for work in an emergency if I haven't been paid?" Now the cheapest machine I can get by on is an 8gb Pi 4 and the monitor and keyboard I still have lying around. I know because I've done it.
    - musicale 5y ago
      > "which is the cheapest Mac I could use for work in an emergency if I haven't been paid?" Mac mini (late 2012 or later), $100 to $200 on ebay atm. Honorable mention goes to one of my favorite Macs ever, the mid-2012 15" MacBook Pro "Retina", which can also run Catalina. The tricky part is you need a Mac that can run macOS Catalina (or later) so it gets security patches (for most of the rest of this year at least.) Sadly the poor Mac might have to turn into a Linux or ChromeOS PC if you want to keep getting security patches after its ~10 year macOS support lifespan is over. :(
      - jamesy0ung 5y ago
        I use a 2012 i7 Mac Mini I picked up for cheap as a server. Can hold 2 drives and upgrade memory to 16GB. Quite performant and silent.
        unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        Yes -- I wish my 2012 was an i7, but it's an i5. It does have the RAM upgrade and I guess it would be zippier with an SSD. I've never been quite ready to dedicate it as a dev server but it is now beyond usefulness as a fallback developer machine; just not quick enough.
    - csouza-f 5y ago
      The UASP caddy it's not that easy to put to work. Just to share my experience, I did bought a UASP caddy to plug into my Raspberry Pi 4 and unfortunately the microchip in the caddy was not recognizable by the Linux kernel running in the Raspbian system. I would take a more careful choice when purchase a caddy again, to guarantee the chip is supported by the kernel. [0] Jeff Geerling has a nice article talking about that: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/uasp-makes-raspberry-pi-4-disk-io-50-faster https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/uasp-makes-raspberry-...
      - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        I had a bad experience with one UASP caddy, I must admit (a Sabrent) -- it's fine on my Mac and doesn't work on the Pi. (Even after the manufacturer firmware update that says it should). I found a reliable way to test it was to try to load a 1.5gb database into mariadb. The caddy I am using is this one, if it helps you at all: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00FCLG65U https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00FCLG65U Discontinued but I think any replacement Inateck should be a good choice. I think even the newer Sabrents should be fine but I don't know. This Inateck caddy is excellent; it's the one I have been recommending. Though I'd like to test some M.2 stick adapters. (I'd originally begun to devise a Pi 4 SSD appliance for one of my customers to sell with their database product, but the chip shortage has put paid to that.)

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

By the time you've added enough components to make it fully functional, it's up to the price range of a used machine off eBay or even some new chromebooks

user_7832 5y ago
I think that's a fundamental issue with a lot of these basic electronics. A significant % of the cost is on packaging/markup/distribution when the chip itself is so cheap. I frequently see old mini-PCs with i3s and it's for ~100EUR. Even a 4th gen i3 is going to be way more powerful than a Pi, the only thing going for the Pi is probably newer faster memory. IMO the best use case for the Pi is buying 10 Pi-zeros at a discount and putting them on a moderately-heavy task that needs them to run off a battery.
_ea1k 5y ago
That's true, although I think it is also getting to the point that it is at least as powerful as some of those cheap Chromebooks. Most of those don't even have 8 GB of RAM like the latest Pi 4. It seems like whatever Pi comes next might pass some of these.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  The 8gb Pi 4 is crazily good value for money, but one of the striking things about the Pi OS is that you barely need the 8gb ever. The 4gb machine is fine for almost everyone, as is a £5 case, £10 UASP caddy and a £20 120gb SSD. And _then_ if you don't have stuff lying around, you go onto eBay looking for bits. Mice, keyboards, whatever. At some point I need to upgrade my secondhand MacBook Pro. In the back of my mind I always the idea of "which is the cheapest Mac I could use for work in an emergency if I haven't been paid?" Now the cheapest machine I can get by on is an 8gb Pi 4 and the monitor and keyboard I still have lying around. I know because I've done it.
  - musicale 5y ago
    > "which is the cheapest Mac I could use for work in an emergency if I haven't been paid?" Mac mini (late 2012 or later), $100 to $200 on ebay atm. Honorable mention goes to one of my favorite Macs ever, the mid-2012 15" MacBook Pro "Retina", which can also run Catalina. The tricky part is you need a Mac that can run macOS Catalina (or later) so it gets security patches (for most of the rest of this year at least.) Sadly the poor Mac might have to turn into a Linux or ChromeOS PC if you want to keep getting security patches after its ~10 year macOS support lifespan is over. :(
    - jamesy0ung 5y ago
      I use a 2012 i7 Mac Mini I picked up for cheap as a server. Can hold 2 drives and upgrade memory to 16GB. Quite performant and silent.
      - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        Yes -- I wish my 2012 was an i7, but it's an i5. It does have the RAM upgrade and I guess it would be zippier with an SSD. I've never been quite ready to dedicate it as a dev server but it is now beyond usefulness as a fallback developer machine; just not quick enough.
  - csouza-f 5y ago
    The UASP caddy it's not that easy to put to work. Just to share my experience, I did bought a UASP caddy to plug into my Raspberry Pi 4 and unfortunately the microchip in the caddy was not recognizable by the Linux kernel running in the Raspbian system. I would take a more careful choice when purchase a caddy again, to guarantee the chip is supported by the kernel. [0] Jeff Geerling has a nice article talking about that: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/uasp-makes-raspberry-pi-4-disk-io-50-faster https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/uasp-makes-raspberry-...
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      I had a bad experience with one UASP caddy, I must admit (a Sabrent) -- it's fine on my Mac and doesn't work on the Pi. (Even after the manufacturer firmware update that says it should). I found a reliable way to test it was to try to load a 1.5gb database into mariadb. The caddy I am using is this one, if it helps you at all: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00FCLG65U https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00FCLG65U Discontinued but I think any replacement Inateck should be a good choice. I think even the newer Sabrents should be fine but I don't know. This Inateck caddy is excellent; it's the one I have been recommending. Though I'd like to test some M.2 stick adapters. (I'd originally begun to devise a Pi 4 SSD appliance for one of my customers to sell with their database product, but the chip shortage has put paid to that.)