[whalesalad]

You're right. But... if you've ever used a Raspberry Pi as any kind of modern web server, you'll realize just how slow it is. Compile ruby on a modern PC vs a Raspberry, and it really forces you to remember that this is a tiny litte ARM device for fun projects + experiments, and not mean't for a rails stack (as an example).

My point is not to knock the Raspberry, rather, this demonstrates just how pathetic an Amazon Micro instance is. It's abysmal to the point that you have to ask yourself why they provide them at all. It's like they're teasing us, "Here, a free server! Enjoy it!" but in reality you'd rather drink a shot of drano full of nails because it's so painful to work with. Then again, beggars can't be choosers and free is free.

[frehpt]

I think you're missing the point of the micro instance. It can give you decent performance in short bursts, which is suitable for many light usage cases e.g. a low traffic blog. If you are going to load it via a benchmark you get very heavily throttled way below the performance you would get with light usage.

[superuser2]

I don't think it's meant for production. I use mine for staging, ssh tunneling, hosting small projects with <1000 users, and to ssh to a Linux box I control and can run emacs on when I don't have my laptop.