Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

michaelt

> The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99.

Meanwhile, a refurbished corporate laptop with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD can be yours for $199 [1]

I'm sure there will still be people who want the Pi 5 but at these prices, I ain't one of them.

[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/327079631563

View on HN

Those will dry up soon enough. Corporate laptop refreshes will be drawn out as they try and cost save on the increased price.

You also better hope the aliexpress dont figure out a way to get the RAM out of those things because they will start harvesting it for sure if there is money to made.

> Those will dry up soon enough.

We're talking about a pi replacement. The Pi 5 is slower than a 10yo laptop. That's gives us a very vast pool of used laptops.

> You also better hope the aliexpress dont figure out a way to get the RAM

That is a real worry and I can see used machines being gutted because selling DDR3/4/5 sticks is way easier and profitable than the whole machine. Adapters for SODIMM to regular DIMM are readily available and cheap, too.

Windows 11 requiring a TPM is still going to force a decent number of replacements: extended support on W10 is $61 Y1, $122 Y2, $244 Y3.

Delaying that refresh might actually end up the more expensive option.

I recently did an install of Windows 11 on a machine without TPM

To bypass the check during installation:

    Boot the laptop from your USB.

    When you see the "This PC can't run Windows 11" screen, press Shift + F10 to open a command prompt.

    Type regedit and hit Enter.

    Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup.

    Right-click Setup, create a new Key named LabConfig.

    Inside LabConfig, create two DWORD (32-bit) values:

        BypassTPMCheck = 1

        BypassSecureBootCheck = 1

    Close the registry and the command prompt; the installer will now let you proceed.

It's a never-ending cat-and-mouse game, and unsupported hacks like these usually aren't well-received in corporate environments. Decent stop-gap for home use, though!

> Those will dry up soon enough.

And worse, they're shucking surplus for RAM And SSD's now. I am seeing more and more eBay auctions for surplus PC's sans SSD and RAM. So the second hand market is going to be invaded by the reseller parasites leaving us with $50 CPU-in-a-box and $500+ RAM/SSD parts

The EDU Neo is $500, too bad it’s not as versatile.

What is the edu neo

The MacBook Neo’s education price of $499

It blows my mind that a Pi is a significant portion of the cost of it.

And the Pi doesn't even come with a monitor, keyboard, speakers, or power supply!

I’d bet a lot that the Neo has a better SSD in it too.

Having a SSD certainly is better than no SSD.

The Pi isnt a loss leader for user acquisition nor do they get to enjoy Apples economy of scale. Apple can take a small loss on this and it will still be worth it if they retain the users in their ecosystem.

Is there any evidence that’s the case? They always had massively bigger margins than all other PC manufacturers so it’s unlikely they are selling it at a loss even if’s significantly reduced

I mean, it's Apple we're talking about. Selling at margins <50% can probably be considered "at a loss"

For most older laptops it's easy enough, you just open them up and take the RAM sticks out. There are SO-DIMM to DIMM adapters to fit a laptop memory stick in a DIMM socket.

RPis are used in a lot of embedded devices. From industrial IoT to music keyboards. You can't easily use refurbishes laptops for those[1].

[1] Korg Kronos with its crazy Intel Atom based architecture notwithstanding.

Those are not in the same order of magnitude in power consumption or physical size. This drastically changes their optimal use cases.

Second hand equipment being cheaper than brand new equipment isn't much of a surprise.

Some people don't want trashy looking crap sitting around their family room in order to save $100

Reply on news.ycombinator.com