[gigel82]

Or you can get a brand new N100 mini pc from Amazon for < $150 with 16Gb RAM and a 512Gb SSD (probably cheaper on AliExpress). It's much newer (10nm instead of 13nm+) and can idle as low as 6W.

And for GPIO (if really needed) you can always add something like an USB Arduino micro (clone) for a couple of bucks.

[mianos]

I got one of these recently. It was ridiculously easy to just install stock debs on.

Every time I look at the wall wart plug pack it comes with I laugh to myself. 8W. In terms of price, speed and compatibility the Raspberry Pi looks laughable.

If I want GPIO I just use ESP32s with wifi. I am then unconstrained in terms of other stuff hanging off them. Using the new nano ESP32 boards I can just hot glue them to whatever I want to talk to.

[RetroTechie]

> In terms of price, speed and compatibility the Raspberry Pi looks laughable.

Just for kicks, some reference:

Assuming the Gflops numbers are roughly comparable, ~50 Gflops would have you competing for the #1 spot in the first TOP500 list, June 1993:

https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/1993/06

Which came equipped with 1,024 SuperSPARCs @ 32 MHz:

https://www.top500.org/system/166997

Even ~2000, that might still have squeezed you into the bottom of the list? Note that power consumption of above system will have been in the 10s if not 100s of kW. To say nothing of size or purchase price.

That's only 1 human generation ago. What on Earth are you doing with these things? Running physics simulations of nuclear explosions, or what?

[donmcronald]

These look really cool. The biggest downside is having 100 brands to choose from. It makes me feel like there's a good chance I could pick something that ends up being total e-waste.

Can anyone recommend one?