And then there's the cooling and power consumption difference between a 10 year old system and a RPi. It's not even close.
Like this kind of stuff: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Lenovo-Intel-i3-Dual-Core-i5-Q...
Is plentiful and easy to buy, again - ships anywhere in the EU.
As for the power consumption - I have to disagree again, I have an SFF like this and in idle it uses about 10W of power, 40W under load.
Rpi4 4GB uses 1-3W in idle, and up to 15W under full load. Yes, the numbers for the Pi are lower, but I wouldn't say "it's not even close". It's close enough that I would absolutely consider getting the larger PC instead.
Our used cars go for peanuts compared to used cars in the mainland for example.
I am often trawling the UK ebay for tech stuff because it's so much cheaper than Blocket (a craigslist-like) here in Sweden.
PS: very very pedantically and technically, UK isn't an EU member any longer. Although there is some limbo period.
I was somewhat intrigued by the use of the term mainland, but it certainly has some debate behind it: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3652/how-to-refe...
Yes second hand cars in the UK are cheaper, factors being that there has been a consumer rise for a while, seeing more second hand cars. This with the island effect makes for dispersal of those second hand goods more curtailed and for example you may be able to get cheaper cars in Germany second hand if the geography curtailed those easily shifting to nearby countries who have had less of a consumer drive.
Which is why my friend in Bulgaria will buy a second hand car in the UK, drive it back, sell it for twice what he paid for it. Then in Bulgaria Walnut wood is about 1/5th of the price of what it demands in the UK. But most opportunities in life are going the extra mile.
Yes UK is still technically an EU member during the transition period. How exporting/importing of cars pans out, well as long as the we don't end up with trade loop-holes - then I'll be happy and by that. Say EU has import tax of 30% on UK cars, new or second hand. Yet no such taxes for imports from say canada. Then the UK has no tax import on cars from UK to canada, so would be possible to export to Europe, via Canada to skirt such import taxes. That kinda thing worries me as environmentally, not good. But could happen.
All I do know though is that the current trade negotiations seem like a Monty Python playbook:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK0cUv3ba-o
something to do with steering wheel being on wrong site making them useless to all of EU other than for parts.
I believe it stems from a tradition of not disposing of things, and instead selling them on (via "car boot" sales) or handing them down. I believe (and this is pure conjecture) that it's a recent thing for brits to dispose of things with such frivolity, and this is somewhat echoed in the car-boot sales of late being chock-full of brand new mostly chinese cheap crap.
And maybe if you have an overabundance of second-hand goods then maybe the price goes down as all of the friction to sell even things considered "tat" are gone.
And most of the things we would consider "tat" are not "tat" to everyone else, for instance, I bought my first computers for 5gbp from a boot-sale, for such a token amount of money it is likely a person would not have sold it another way. Thus, I get a cheaper computer than I would have had to pay otherwise.
For $85 I can only find core2duo/quad 4gb RAM and spinning rust so there's no way that is a viable alternative for a RPi.
Maybe UK is an outlier or Austria is, I don't know.
The snide comments like the GP's are due to them living in the american bubble.
EDIT: also note the comment you're replying to is using a traditional workstation "slab" as an example. I'd rather use a small RPi that frees up more desk space than buy something that will make my work environment at home even more cramped!
Are you looking for broken screens? If not, $200 sounds reasonable enough to me.
The PI kicks ass if you want to play with hardware and actually use it's pins to build robots or whatever, or you want to use it's amazing camera and libraries. For pure compute its not a great deal.
Curious - any thoughts on why?
Same way hard drives a few years back increased in price, supply and demand as a factory went out of action for a while, curtailing market supply. Also why external USB drives became source of HD's as they had a larger supply buffer as less popular at the time and more in warehouses/stores.
I am free to buy and sell to and from any country in the world, the issues is not everyone is willing to deal and pay for international shipping which ends up quite high for a cheap SFF tower system.
In principle, shouldn't one of the consequences of the EU project be that intra-EU shipping rates should, for the same distance, be identical between within the same country and between EU countries? (Of course, I realise that outcome may not yet have actually been achieved in practice.)
One would hope that if they are successful in improving those transport links, shipping costs will reduce as a result.
For desktops, it shouldn't really matter. One quite likely already has a spare USB keyboard with the right layout, and if one doesn't, it shouldn't cost much to buy one (whether new or second-hand).
Big markets like US, UK and Germany have low prices on consumer products and in small markets like Austria and BeNeLux countries consumer products cost more.
Also I would much rather do technical support for Pi, than some old junk in questionable state of disrepair.
Generally though it is like a "full computer" so I don't know what I would buy one of these for, I currently have 3 Pis that have been on for a few years now continuously they're running web servers/automated tasks mostly Pi Zeros and a 3B+.
I think it's crazy 8GB is becoming like the new 4GB... 32GB is almost not enough personally.
And the used market is great. My favorite for a very small desktop are the Lenovo USFF devices like the M92P, M93P, etc. You have to search a bit, but you can find 8GB models with an i3/i5, small SSD, and Windows 10 for $110 or so on eBay.
Not as small as a Rpi, but pretty compact: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0036/4806/1509/products/m0...