[zamubafoo]

While his arguments of performance to power might have some truth, I strongly dislike that he's using the current pricing as a comparison point.

Sure, buying one now is (relatively) expensive for what it is, but I bought my Pi's back when they were MSRP ($45-54 USD for RPI4 4GiB and $35 USD for RPi3B+). Nothing can compete at that price point. While there are cheaper options or more powerful options for a bit more, none of them have the same support the Raspberry PI has.

As for reliability, dropping ~$25 USD for a drive enclosure and having it boot from that is doable with the Raspberry Pi 4 (and the 3 but I've never tested it).