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by make3 3771 days ago
Couldn't you already just plug a fairly cheap USB dongle in your rasperry pi ? I'm not sure I see what the big deal is, aside from probably making the price cheaper and freeing up a usb slot
4 comments

If you've ever tried to get wifi working (esp on earlier RPis) you'll understand it is not that simple. Especially for newbies. Having said that its a good baptism of fire.

Raspberry Pi with built in wireless comms means it uses a standard piece of hardware so the software stack can be configured to work out of the box. That can't happen with the existing arrangement. Also the power supply problems with original Pis are frustrating to say the least. These are most evident when plugging in USB wifi devices. Again having a standard integrated piece of hardware will (hopefully) avoid this.

This doesn't really reflect my experience at all with the RPi 2. The edimax or official wifi dongles "just work" with NetworkManager.

With the early RPi it was a bit different because of USB power problems and kernel bugs, but those are mostly solved.

Experiences vary. I agree with tonylemesmer, getting them to work has not been trivial for me.
Oh you can, its just little kids tinkering around (and the parents who are going to buy the thing) having it "batteries included" is good thing.
Aren't those two pretty big upsides?
You're fairly limited in terms of antenna size/placement when you use a tiny dongle. If it's built into the Pi, they could have the antennae wrap around the edge (similar to how the iPhone does it) to allow for a much higher quality connection.

At least, that's what I hope they're doing with it.