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Comment by Symbiote | Hacker News Reader

This is cool, but the $4 version isn't comparable with the Raspberry Pi.

The version with connectors and a case costs $39. The Raspberry Pi 3 with connectors and a case is sold for $35 at the first US retailer I found.

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On the other hand, you don't always want all the connectors and you have to spend $30. Being able to spend only $4 for the bare minimum is a nice option to have.

Precisely, they can both co-exist and are welcome.

This narrative with click-bait titles of someone having to loose that one has to win is dumb and should die out.

Especially if you want to integrate it with another project so you'll only be soldering on the connections you are using anyway.

It is being compared to the Raspberry Pi Zero, which costs about $5 and it is closer on concept to this VoCore2Lite.

Yes, but the zero already has all the connectors. You plug in the power and hdmi, and it's a fully working machine. This is a board that requires some soldering skills, and it's a really high barier to entry I find.

This isn't intended as a replacement for your desktop computer - most applications don't even require hdmi and afaik the VoCore doesn't support one anyway.

This computer is intended for integration in another device that you want to control via WiFi any maybe some more. It's neither a Workstation nor a Mediacenter.

Sure, but my point is that you can't use this without taking out a soldering iron. It doesn't matter how you want to use it - you just can't, until you solder on some connectors/cables to it. Pi Zero is one dollar more expansive and it doesn't require any soldering.

As someone who really hates soldering things, it's a big barrier to entry.

The makers of this product would even tell you that you aren't in the target market. This is a System On Module, not a Single Board Computer. The later is a "unbox, boot up, and play" experience. The former is "unbox, wire into my existing circuits, standup the board, start coding" experience.

Sure, absolutely, but the title of the linked article is literally "Move over Raspberry Pi, here is a $4, coin-sized, open-source Linux computer", so comparisons to the Raspberry Pi are inevitable.

At the time of my comment, this was also the title of the HN post.

It's only in the headline, so we can probably blame the editor rather than the writer.

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