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From: Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Raspberry Pi5 versus other cheap Intel based boxes for general
 computing
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2024 15:43:14 +0100
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On 03/04/2024 11:23, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> On a sunny day (Wed, 3 Apr 2024 10:24:00 +0100) it happened Martin Brown
> <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote in <uuj77i$3r4ca$1@dont-email.me>:
> 
>> In part I got it for the portability and free Mathematica license that
>> comes with it.
> 
> Yes, that was nice too.
> Linux has Octave too for math, some more.

I generally use Maxima and most recently Julia for its arbitrary 
precision mathematics, but there are few things that they can't do.

>> I reckon its performance single tasking isn't far off the venerable
>> i7-3770 from a decade or so back (and still pretty capable today).
> 
> My laptop now > 10 years old now runs Ubuntu.
> At least everything works, put a Huawei 4 G stick in it and internet all over Europe.
> This Raspberry  has the Huawei 4 G stick in it now so I am online in a flash with one click
> and offline after that with one click so no hacking and a dynamic IP address to make hacking even more problematic.
> 
> Did you have a P4 before the Pi5? If so what's the main difference in experience?

I had an original Raspberry Pi way back with composite video out but 
never really found something it could do well enough to be interesting. 
I found cheaper STM32 development boards more to my liking. YMMV

The Pi5 is quite a big step up from there! Even came with working GCC 
compiler configured in the standard distribution which was nice.

>> I was tempted by an N100 based toy PC at Xmas but managed to resist.
> 
> Yea, we will see were it goes...

N100 looks quite capable. My only concern is the whiny fans on these 
very small enclosures. Fan noise increases rapidly with rpm and tiny 
fans don't move much air. SFF is as small as I like to go.

> My 20 year old PC upstairs still runs xfree and the old audio system (before Alsa), and works still perfectly with my satellite stuff.
> Is an AMD 486.

I haven't got much left that is quite that old. One machine from 2003 
that is kept mainly because it has a real parallel port needed for some 
bitbanging programmers that I still very occasionally need to use.

My spellchequer today wants to turn you into Panatella must be all the 
food over the Easter Holidays that's affecting it!

-- 
Martin Brown