I have a Raspberry Pi 500 I regularly use as personal admin computer, it is great and just works for all the things you can do with a personal computer.

That's not to say I don't have much beefier work computers - I do - but for the rPi 500 is a perfectly cromulent home computer. It's a computer. I just plug it in, it works.

I get it that it's not necessary but the ram upgrade from 8 to 16 used to be a $40 splurge, and that was with healthy profits for everyone involved.

And now you pay the old 16GB price for 4GB.

The RPI was really good because it was a powerful SOC that ran Linux with lots of GPIO and easy to operate. Now there are a dime a dozen ESP32 based projects that give you the same flexibility. You should almost never buy a RPI for projects these days, its completely overkill

I just got a Minisforum UM870 Slim with AMD Ryzen™ 7 8745H for €304 (taxes included + €30 shipping), and sourced locally used SODIMM DDR5 RAM at ~120 EUR for 16GB: I'd certainly take a full-fledged mini PC at 450 EUR than a Pi at 385 USD + VAT + customs fee (pretty much the same price most likely).

Yes, I'm missing an NVMe SSD in there too, but I've got a bunch of older 512GB drives around from upgraded computers.

Power usage is probably lower on the Pi5, but likely not by much anymore in the idle state.

Yeah basically take lowest ram RPi if you need GPIO for the sensors/actuators whatever hook it up via network to NUC or Minisforum.

If you don’t need GPIO just go with NUC/Minisforum.

A Pi 4 is my son's primary computer, GCompris, Tux Racer, my vibe coded apps for him are the primary use cases.

> Unless you have a true, irreplaceable need for a 16GB model

I need to `npm install strip`

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”

People are irrationally obsessed with the idea of a very small cheap computer that could replace their laptop or desktop, for no reason.

If you created a little cube the size of an Apple Watch with built in WiFi and Bluetooth, and maybe put a little LED screen on it, and it could run Linux and could be powered with POE and USB-C or something, people would feel an urge to just buy one, with no real use case for it.

> because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.

The thing is, they are all x86. The currently available ways to get an ARM general purpose computer are... Raspberry, Raspberry clones of various degrees of shittyness, Apple's lineup and a few Chromebooks plus even rarer Windows systems that no one wants because nothing runs on them.

> Most hobby use cases would be fine with the 1GB, 4GB, or even 8GB versions.

Oh yup... I'm running unbound (DNS resolver) at home 24/7 on a Pi 3 from 2015 since years and years. Zero issue. I run that on a Pi because that one really needs to be on 24/7 and hardly consumes any resources (I mean: it's just DNS queries). But a Pi simply ain't good for much more than that.

> I thought we all established long ago that trying to use a Raspberry Pi like a computer or laptop replacement was not a good idea, because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.

I fully agree. For the proper stuff I encourage anyone to buy used enterprise gear with proper RAM (i.e. ECC RAM) and a proper CPU (like a Xeon).

I've got four NUCs too but the real workhorse is a used Xeon with ECC RAM.

> The Raspberry Pi is great if you need what it offers, but at some point the mainstream Raspberry Pi community lost the plot and started treating them like laptop, desktop, or server replacements, which they were never great at.

I agree. I've got like seven Pi (I was an early adopter of those) but don't ever plan to buy another.

It's like you said: they lost the plot (not just the community: those who make them too).