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Comment by joe_mamba | Hacker News Reader

>Yeah, Pi 5 2gb is ~20% more expensive compared to pi3b on release, factoring in inflation (Both in including VAT and local prices)

I don't really care how it compares to past models or inflation to justify its price tag. I was just comparing to to what you can buy on the used market today for the same price and it gets absolutely dunked on in the value proposition by notebooks since the modern full spec RPi is designed to more of a ARM PC than an cheap embedded board.

60 Euros for 2GB and 100 for 8GB models is kind of a ripoff if you don't really need it for a specific niche use case.

I think an updated Pi-zero with 2GB RAM and better CPU stripped of other bells and whistles for 30 Euros max, would be amazing value, and more back to the original roots of cheap and simple server/embedded board that made the first pi sell well.

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A used notebook was also better in price to performance 10 years ago, no?

Yeash, but not as good as an alternative to a PI back then, since 8 year old notebooks 10 years ago (so 18 year old notebooks today) were too bulky and power hungry to be a real alternative. Power bricks were all 90W and CPU TDW was 35-45W. But notebooks from the 2018 era (intel 8th gen) have quite low power chips that make a good PI alternatives nowadays.

The mobile and embedded X86 chips have closed the gap a lot in power consumption since the PI first launched.

Now you can even get laptops with broken screens for free, and just use their motherboard as a home server alternative to a PI. Power consumption will be a bit higher, but not enough to offset the money you just saved anytime soon.

Laptops are still pretty bulky and power hungry in comparison if you're looking for very SFF and passive cooling.

Pop open a cheap Celeron N laptop, and often, the motherboard inside is essentially a passively cooled SBC.

https://www.insidemylaptop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Le...

The big pain with using something like this would mostly be the IO and odd form factor.

You can passively cool a laptop CPU too if that's your jam. Plus, latest RPI 5 cases now feature fans to not thermal throttle :))

You can get a 5-year-old laptop with a perfectly working screen for free if you're on good terms with the owner of a company who has a stack of them sitting in a storage closet waiting for disposal. :)

Which is basically just cutting out the middlemen in a transaction that might cost $100 on eBay.

Used corporate laptops are particularly cost-effective if you're interested in running Windows, as unlike Intel NUCs and most SBC products, they typically include hardware-locked Windows 10 Pro licenses which can be upgraded to Windows 11 Pro for free.

5-year old laptops for free aren't really a thing in most of Europe unless maybe you're in Norway or some super rich country where 100$ is pocket change. In most large places I worked in Europe, laptops are leased from a service provider, not owned by the company. When they're obsolete they get sold in bulk locally or abroad. But never for free.

That comparison was true back in 2012 when the first version was released, too.

Things like used PCs and forgotten closet laptops were running circles around brand-new Raspberry Pi systems, in performance per dollar, for as long as we've had new Raspberry Pis to make that comparison with.

Those first Pis didn't even have wifi, and they were as picky about power supplies and stuff back then as a Pi 5 is today.

The primary aspects that are new are that the featureset of new models continues to improve, and the price of a bare board has increased by an inflation-adjusted ~$10.

(Meanwhile: A bare Pi 3B still costs $35 right now -- same as in 2016. When adjusted for inflation, it has become cheaper. $35 in 2016 is worth about $48 today.)

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