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Raspberry Pi Hits the 2 Million Mark
The Raspberry Pi project that we've been fans of for quite a while now has hit a new milestone: Today, they announced that as of the last week in October, the project has sold more than two million boards. Raspberry Pi is anything but alone in the tiny, hackable computer world (all kinds of other options, from Arduino to the x86-based Minnowboard, are out there, and all have their selling points), but the low price, open-source emphasis, and focus on education have all helped the Pi catch on. If yours is one of these 2 million, what are you using it for? (And if you favor some other small system for your own experiments, what factors matter?)
Tell us about it. What do you cook up with Arduino kits, and how do you use them?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
ARMv6 is outdated, ARMv7 is the way to go. And I'd rather have a not-so-beefy GPU than one that takes binary firmware blobs.
Had ambitions to get one to sling video from a home server to the telly, but not sure if it'll actually do the job anywhere near as well as a click'n'drool set top box from the likes of Logitech, even taking into account the good price and openness.
First Raspberry Pi is powers an Asterisk VOIP system
Second Raspberry Pi, is a low end NAS device for system backups
Third Raspberry Pi is running RaspFi as a squeeze slave
Fourth Raspberry Pi is running a Squeezebox server
This weekend I found IPFIRE (Linux firewall/router follwoing IPCOP like design). Installed a UML295 LTE internet usb dongle with the on-board ethernet, up and running 10Mb/s (Both Up and Down) backup for my internet connections. Can also use it as base for mobile router in the car for the kids. Not bad for the low cost investment.
For some reason the RPi always seem to get so much bitterness here. Apparently there are a lot of self-described nerds on a tech website for nerds who cannot imagine the use of a very small, cheap, low power hackable computer with moderate computing power.
I find this very strange.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Building an X-free Linux distro :)
Spent All My Mod Points
Slashdotters know about a lot of different small hardware.
Suppose you wanted to build a gas pump controller with a touch screen based on Android.
One issue is that in order to protect customers before certifying the pump, the department of weights and measures wants to see that the gas station owner can't easily manipulate the device to show an inflated reading. What kind of hardware would you consider?
ARMv6 is outdated, ARMv7 is the way to go. And I'd rather have a not-so-beefy GPU than one that takes binary firmware blobs.
Of course, if the tech doesn't fit, you must ... not purchase it. Or something like that
On the other hand, 2 million purchases seem to think that forking over $40 for a board isn't a TERRIBLE idea.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
Have they fixed the Raspberry Pi restarts the moment you plug in anything that actually needs power in USB? Seriously, you would have thought they would have added a voltage regulator or SOMETHING to stop a full reset from occuring from the voltage drop.
It makes using the Raspberry PI with ANY USB devices very difficult..
I'm pretty sure Microsoft Windows is the Microsoft Windows of the OS world. Don't know what you were going for there.
Wow... iPhone vs Rpi, this ought to be good. Fight!
I've built an older iPhone into a wall to serve as a control panel for my home automation system. Works great and a bargain at the 2nd hand price I paid, but I've picked up a Pi as well as an Arduino to try and create more of these wall mounted controllers. The reason to switch to these platforms? More control over the form factor, easier to program, easier to interface with other hardware (like dimmers), ability to use tactile keys rather than a touchscreen, etc. I haven't decided yet between Arduino and the Pi.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
My RPi is loaded with RaspBMC and I use it to watch videos I have stored on my main machine.
It is hooked up directly to the USB port of my TV so it powers up when I turn the TV on, and turns off when I'm done.
It is powerful enough to stream 1080p over SMB/CIFS, and I got a 10EUR IR remote that needed exactly zero configuration (plugged in the USB receiver, counted up to 10, it was ready to go).
Sure, it's not the fastest machine on earth, but for what I use it it's miles better than DLNA or similar crap.
I wanted to build a fun little project over the summer to scare cats out of the garden.
The RPi was a great platform to work with for a casual project like this. Having the GPIO was a real winner here.
I wrote it all up for others to peruse and have offered enough information that anyone could build it for themselves.
http://norris.org.au/cattack/
There are *quirks* to this hardware, but it is not a commercial device, it is for education use. I was telling my teacher-in-training friend that I don't know if I'd want to use the RPi in class with 30 students all finding the quirks at different times: it would be chaos! But for a single enthusiastic student working through these problems will give them a fantastic introduction to troubleshooting and the real life pain that comes with getting something to work.
The Raspberry Pi is the Microsoft Windows of the OS world.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft Windows is the Microsoft Windows of the OS world. Don't know what you were going for there.
For parent, OS = Operating System.
For GP, OS = Open Source.
Confusion removed, HTH.
There will be a rich supply of perfectly working boards on eBay soon I hope :D
Spent All My Mod Points
I mainly use it as always-on machine in addition to the filer. The main reason is that with a filer you are more conservative. OpenVPN, postgresql db. I also have some applicationservers (3-tier) developed for it, but that is not production yes.
Most important bit is long time usability and support, features are only secondary. In that RPI is unique.
Most of the time, my RP, coupled with a 8-Relay board ($20 on ebay,) reports (via SMS) whenever any of my house doors are opened or closed, as well the garage door. Further, it has a web server with a small app that allows me to raise/lower the garage door.
A picture of the board I constructed can be seen at http://www.blacksteel.com/pics/RP.jpg - the board has since been re-arranged a bit to give me better access to the HDMI port. The software is pretty minimal - a shell script to handle periodic polling of the various magnetic reed switches on the doors, it also keeps track of all changes in a mysql database. A php script to handle opening/closing the garage door (and animating the process in an image using data from the switches!)
Also, whenever I have a movie that can't be played back by my old but still working Apple TV 1 running XBMC, I use OpenElec XBMC on my RP - it's not the most responsive XBCM in the world, but it plays back high resolution MKV's whereas the ATV1 can't keep up.
All in all, it's an amazing board and I have other plans for it, grin. I likely will get another one or two at some point.
You're stuck in a 20 year time warp my friend. HDMI has been the standard video transport method for a long time. If you need to interface your board to 5V logic then use one of the many cheap level converters out there. Most 5v logic will probably run at 3.3v anyhow these days.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I bought two Raspberry Pi's in October. One of them is currently doing duty as an IRC server inside of one of my Broadband-Hamnet mesh nodes (formerly HSMM-MESH), the other is for use as a backup, and for experimenting.
http://www.hsmm-mesh.org/
No matter where you go... there you are.
I already own a very small, cheap, computer except mine has a HELL of a lot more computing power than this P.O.S. It's called an "iphone" (perhaps you have heard of it) and hundreds of millions of people already own them and they have been used to do some amazing things like control robots and play music. Wake me when this rasptard pie gets anywhere close to this. But freetards like you don't think they count because for you morons everything has to be under a communist license or some such bullshit.
Steve,
Is that you?
You became a zombie.
Awesome, where should I send my $50 for the iphones you're selling?
TI fully documents their system on chip (SOC) chips.
Broadcom doesn't.
This alone makes Broadcom (which is in the Raspberry Pi) completely non-free and craptastic, and the BeagleBone worthy of consideration by a hacker.
F Broadcom. F Raspberry Pi. Don't waste your time on non-free systems which you have to reverse engineer because the documentation is purposely incomplete.
The fact that there are significant reverse-engineering efforts going on
https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/wiki
https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/
is proof that the Broadcom chip in the Raspberry Pi is anything but open.
What is the "lack of freedom" preventing you from doing?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I have two mounted behind two LCD TV's. They get power off the TV's USB port, and the hook up via the HDI port. I use this for digital signage.One uses Feh to do rotating fixed sign. the other pulls data from the net for a flavor list for my ice cream store. It's a real time update. Works great.
It was probably meant the other way around:
Microsoft Windows is the Raspberry Pi of the OS world.
In terms of performance, that sounds about right.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Two are running raspbmc, hooked up to 1080p TVs and feed off the NAS, this works great, and it's so easy. The other one is in the kid's room hooked up to a $8 used PS3 webcam and mic so we can watch/listen, plus it has an mp3 playlist of various lullabies and white noise. Bloody brilliant machine. I'm going to get one for my mom and dad so they can experience the joys of XBMC as well, the plugins for legal free streaming HD content are amazing, and they'll easily be able to stream videos and pictures from their cameras and laptops. I'm going to get another one just for fooling around with and see what else I can come up with. I just wish it easily supported VGA monitors (I have one that's 1280x1024 and it doesn't work with it), but I'm still quite happy with it!
I made a photo booth which was installed inside of an old phone booth in a local cafe for a new-media art festival this past summer. I used a Raspberry Pi, a usb webcam, a big red button connected via GPIO, a coin slot connected via GPIO, and an ethernet cable running to the router in the back room. People would insert their dime or two nickles and the button would light up. Pressing the button would take a photo. The Pi then uploaded the photos to a website which looped through all of the photos taken during the festival. People could visit the website on their own devices, but there were also a few screens set up around the town in shop windows displaying the photos. The program to do all this was a simple python script with a loop.
You can still see the photos taken here: http://donttakemypicture.org/
The site uses javascript to keep checking for new photos and to change the photo displayed for you every few seconds.
UK keyboard default
If your-country != default, you change it. What's so hard?
Mind keeping your copypasta to once per thread?
Wow! Said like a true Open Source fundamentalist. I'm hoping you wrote that on an OpenRISC based computer, not a PC with a closed source CPU, closed source BIOS, closed source chipset, closed source video adapter... :-)
I like my hardware Open, however I don't mind shelling out $35 for board to do stuff with. Download and write an image SD card, plug it in.
Up and running in 15 minutes, with no 'wasted' time or money..
What an incredibly narrow-minded diatribe. I don't think anyone attempts to describe the Pi as free in any sense, except that it runs open source software. It was designed, built and sold as a miniature, cheap PC with enough power to give kids and teens their first taste of programming without their parents worrying about little Johnny or little Jane messing up the family computer. Ebon Upton works for Broadcom, and enacted his vision with the hardware he had to hand. He had a very specific demographic and price-point in mind, and that just didn't include you.
The charity behind the Pi only expected to sell a few thousand units in the first year, and if that had been all they'd managed they would still have been happy to have inspired a small group of youngsters to get into coding. No, those youngsters wouldn't have learned how to hit the metal directly, but by the time a coder gets to that stage they can look more widely at other hardware that does allow it (if such a thing actually exists).
As it's turned out, there are a huge number of people in the world who have the imagination to see that a crap, non-free, small, cheap PC with a big support community can be used for far more than teaching young people how to code.
Replace it, probably. Or replace the battery; this is a 3GS model where replacing the battery should be simple.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I bought this to use it as a lightweight server, found it highly underpowered, CPU and memory wise, and discovered that some software I needed was x86 only. So I left it gathering dust in a drawer. I have been tried finding a use for this thingy but could not. End of the story.
I end up using the t-shirt more than the pi itself.
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
I use a HDMI -> DVI-D cable with no problems. I like 3.3V though, all the cool sensors use 3.3V logic...
But I think the bigger sin is no RTC!
I use my Raspberry Pi for a PBX. http://www.raspberry-asterisk.org/
There's no way to trick it into thinking there's a working battery in? Just curious because having a battery in there when you don't need it is a waste, and I wouldn't want it catching fire in my walls or something. This seems like a good idea for old iphones, using them as controllers for other things.
Twinstiq, game news
The post I'm replying to said the iphone hardware was cheap. Now you're telling me I "gotta pay"? Which is it?
My Raspberry pi has done a few things: It started off as a cheap server (running stripped down debian - essentially for eggdrop and ssh tunneling). replaced it with an old desktop for stability.
Then it had a brief stint as a pbx with asterisks, it was buggy and was overkill for my purposes. I learnt how to set up asterisks, though - no mean feat.
It's currently acting as a media centre (with openELEC) but as i hardly use it (again, randomly freezes, lags) i'll soon replace it with a mini PC of some kind.
Next i'll either hook it up to a surveillance camera and make it stream video (or upload snapshots) over the internet or use the gpio pins and hook it up to some transducers and see what ideas i come up with.
The RPi is cheap, it has a lot of projects revolving around it, it's buggy as hell, its essentially only good for fleshing out ideas until i can justify (or not justify) buying nicer hardware (for me at least).
Generally, Arduino is a good way to interface the physical world with software. Other commenters mentioned an autopilot and a 3D printer, both examples of controlling motors or servos with software, based on sensor input.
One project I did was for controlling stage lighting, with programmed sequences of effects being "DJed" in real time. I prototyped an out-of-band management interface for web servers. It could power cycle servers and provide console access. I used a similar system to have computer controlled Christmas lights and 4th of July fireworks.
Another project was controlling a CD burning robot, to burn hundreds of CDs.
In general, pretend you had a robot that could run around doing anything you want, controlled over the network or pre-programmed, so the software side can detect the environment through sensors and then take physical actions through its gpio.
I like Raspbian, but it would be nice to have the Ubuntu packages built for the Pi.
Bit of the back story on the project page explaining why the Pi didn't have Ubuntu from the start.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-raspberry-pi-build-cluster-for-ubuntu/x/5206923
Sometimes I wonder what drives people to be so hateful of things that have proven beneficial for many people. If someone doesn't like something, why do they then post on forums to let everyone ELSE know (particularly those who do find use for the tech) that they don't like it? Very strange.
seconded. I'm giving the BBB more of a try than the raspi.
however, trying to use the BBB as a media server for high res (uac2 audio, asynch, with a good usb/spdif converter) is showing buffering or timing problems. note, I was not getting good results with the raspi, either, but the bbb is not so great for media (flac, full res) serving either. I still have to use my fanless atom itx box for that.
still, I would give the tip of the hat to the BBB rather than the binary blob-based video and poorly laid out board of the pi. shields (capes, sigh) are also more physically stable on the bone with its dual row of decent pin header sockets.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I use my Raspberry Pi to enable me to tell people that I have a Raspberry Pi.
I grew up on 5v logic, but its now a 3.3v world.
deal with it. that's why they make bidirection level converters.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Any, but I'd pot the thing in epoxy inside a metal shell and it wouldn't be user-accessible other than a simple non-root interface to change price per gallon and any other required functions.
If it breaks, throw it away and replace it. If faults are found in the future, ship a later version and swap 'em out.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Before I even booted the image of Raspbian I mounted the file system, set the IP I wanted to use, etc. Still haven't plugged a keyboard or attached a HDMI cable to it, just sshing in and doing stuff. Not sure what I actually want to do iwth it... which is how I got it (someone I know had 2 and just didn't know what he wanted to do with them)
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Yeah, on top of that, I had read somewhere that the Raspberry Pi ethernet port is USB-attached and is prone to periodic resets and disconnects, which basically rules out a Raspberry Pi for projects that would rely on a stable network connection.
Sure, let me google you a citation.... eh, doesn't look particularly trustworthy, but:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/08/24/2228251/serious-problems-with-usb-and-ethernet-on-the-raspberry-pi
But I'm probably mostly upset that the Raspberry Pi is taking away brainshare from people who would otherwise be making interesting hacks for my EeePC 901 :-D Yes, I'm probably the only person upset that Fuduntu is unsupported now :P
There are other hardware RNGs available, but none as inexpensive as a PI. Also because the PI has an RJ45 connection, it can be plugged into my router where it can serve random numbers for all computers on my lan.
We're in the golden age for software development. I prefer an "open" solution like the Beagleboard but I received an R.Pi v2 for free and have made it part of my low-power dev environment. I'll describe this environment for the amusement of ye 'dotters.
I installed a $10 hardware clock in the R.Pi and I power the it with a spare power cord from an Amazon Kindle.
I run Raspbian (Debian) with Icewm DE. I use the R.Pi for coding (Java, C++, Perl, Go) and I push Mercurial updates to a code repo on a Sheevaplug running Debian Wheezy. The Sheevaplug's power supply had failed (typical problem, melted capacitors) but I wired the mainboard to an AC adaptor from a USB hub.
I've overclocked the R.Pi to 900MHz. This isn't enough CPU to browse the Internet directly from the R.Pi with Iceweasel/Firefox, but Midori and NetSurf work well enough. On a Pogoplug V2 (running Debian, you see the pattern here), I have lighttpd and a Perl program that fetches and summarises RSS feeds for me. I can view the RSS summary from the R.Pi using NetSurf or Midori. (Dillo doesn't do tables well.)
When I need to do Web research that requires Flash or special plug-ins, I use rdesktop to connect to a VM instance of Firefox (M-Windows XP or Debian) installed on an AMD box running VMware ESXi server. ESXi server is free.
I have all this running with an APC battery back-up. The APC unit can run for some time with only the ARM kit to power. I have another APC UPS feeding my modem, router, and assorted switches.
It's a versatile dev environment and it didn't cost much. None of it would be possible without Linux. I'll say it again: this is a golden age for software developers.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
While TI documents most of the am3359 SOC it does not provide any documentation for the Imagination Technologies PowerVR GPU core which is proprietary. To the OP, as far as I know there are no non-proprietary GPUs (more or less beefy) on any ARM SOC so good luck on finding one without binary blobs.
Remote wifi temperature sensor. I have an existing 1-wire temp sensor net & wanted to put something in the greenhouse w/o running a wire. I just needed to add a cheap wifi dongle and it just worked. I took a small $ risk and almost no time. If I was doing 10-20, there are cheaper solutions for more time spent, but I think I got a good value.
Since then, I played with RiscOS on it. I'm now playing with it as a thin client that someone built. I'm also going to play with Plex on it. Maybe I'll play with Plan 9 on it.
The first task could probably be done on on any of the other ARM boards that run Linux. The others tasks might work on other boards, but people are building and optimizing for the RPi.
All these ARM and microcontroller boards are fantastic. RPi made the others hit the under $40 price point. It reminds me of the days of Apple vs C64 vs Atari vs IBM and I hope they stick around.
Thanks for the reply. I was thinking that maintenance technicians would need to have access to the system, but you're right, that's not necessary. Assuming the display is separate, a $25 board could be replaced as a unit without increasing cost much, given the cost of the tech's time. That certainly simplifies assuring the customer that the unit hasn't been tampered with.
I run a collocated Raspberry PI and never had a networking issue (it's monitored). I also ran one at home as a vpn server (slow) for a while and it also was mighty stable. I'm willing to bet that most networking issues on the pi can be traced back to crappy power supplies.
It's just another example of a well-marketed product beating technically superior products, which appears to happen 99.9% of the time.
I'm developing a little game on the raspberry pi for my soon to be delivered mini arcade cabinet. It's the perfect side project for an ex-game developer like myself.
I'll grant you the media center thing, although I still use a proper x86 for media center in order not to be limited on anything.
However... .deb) specifically targeted towards them in the wild?
The chinese thingies you talk about. What distributions can they run? Can they run java? Is there any documentation about the GPIO? Is there any GPIO? Can you overclock/undeclock them? Do you have any community documented hardware hacks you can follow? Is there a hardware compatibility list you can check before buying peripherals? Can you find packages (as in
You see, although I agree with you that if you want a "fire and forget" type of device, sure there are much better alternatives. But when you want a platform to hack, you want to have some things granted. I don't want to compile packages from scratch only to find out they don't work for some obscure reason. I need to know all the hardware bugs and errata before starting a project and finding that I cannot finish it halfway.
The RPi is a stable and mature platform thanks to its community. And no matter how much people shout about it, this is the way it is and anyone who is serious about hacking and realises all the time consuming hurdles will agree with me.
The rest of the "moral" or "philosophical" issues are just noise from people who prefer to shout than hack (not implying that you are one of them, just saying)
Mine connects over OpenVPN to my home router and offers itself as a wireless access point. NAS access and secure internet browsing from anywhere that there's an ethernet port, powered by my mobile phone charger.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The fact that there are significant reverse-engineering efforts going on
https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/wiki
https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/
is proof that the Broadcom chip in the Raspberry Pi is anything but open.
Have you realised that you posted the official raspberry pi foundation github account as a reverse engineering proof? They are doing many things, but reverse engineering is not one of them.
Also, I don't think anybody needs proof. It is common knowledge...
TI fully documents their system on chip (SOC) chips.
Sure. Could you please send us a reference of the SGX530 which is the GPU in beagleboard? And the kernel drivers that interface with the blob doesn't count, obviously.
I mean, I like a good argument, but pleeease try to check your facts first.
I built a little sound server for my (tabletop) RPG now my players can summon up dramatic reveal, sad trombone, twilight zone etc at the push of a button (for bonus points I'm now using the same code for a work project)
Well... I have one acting as a media center... 1 attached to a relay board running the lights, heaters, and misters on my reptile enclosures with temp and humidity sensors. 1 using the Pi camera and mjpeg streamer to stream a live feed of one of the enclosures. And 1 on my desk for testing.... I also just picked up my first Beagle Bone Black to see how it compares...... Sno
I use mine to make streamer. It have Icecast for streaming some radio. But most of the usage come from nginx with proxy support for h264 streaming from my storage server. I'm pretty happy with performance since my Pi w/o overclock can reach around 3MB/s In and Out (6MB total). In and Out in my case are almost identical. Last time Pi was up for about 150+ days then I have power outage, and now it is up for 51 days. Pretty impressive from something so small and cheap. Pi root is on NFS btw
On the other hand, if you've ever worked with a Debian based system, mounting the fs on the sd card and editing ..../etc/network/interfaces is really trivial.
I'd expect that anyone playing with one of these is slightly familiar with Linux. And I'd expect that anyone teaching students with one of these would either give a good introduction to Linux or give very detailed lab instructions on initial setup and configuration.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
The first one is a NAS for about 10 TB of USB drives: http://things-linux.blogspot.com/2013/07/delicious-raspberry-pi.html
The second one is part of my home entertainment system running XBMC: http://things-linux.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-second-helping-of-pi.html
The third one is just for playing around with.
Sadly. I bought two of them. I intended to make one a minecraft server for my son. I still havent purchased a network cable. yes I sadly have been that lazy. (maybe I should post this as anon)
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
- SSH to serial converter. Plug a couple of USB-RS232 cables into the Pi, plug them into serial consoles on servers/industrial equipment/whatever, and you no longer have to crouch behind a rack with a laptop whenever you need to monitor/control stuff.
- Print server for a USB laser printer
- NAS/backup machine/torrent downloader/etc
- New guts for a broken NES.
I'm sure the closed-source GPU and ARM11 CPU offend some people, but hey, it gets the job done in places I've stuffed it.
The system has worked perfectly from the programming and electrical point of view. There have been a few failures in the mechanical engineering, mainly with the rubber bands I use for the pulleys, and the pulleys coming loose.
Two other people did CD changing on YouTube. I don't have anything to add. Maybe one day I'll get a chance to post my DMX lighting stuff. the main thing I can tell you about that is it you do not need the DMX shield. All you need is a MAX485 and the connector.
On a scale of 0 (theoretically possible) to 10 (as likely as the sun rising tomorrow) where would you place that?
Use as many significant figures as you like. You'll need them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
" The GPU blob is an 18MB elf file, including libraries. It does an awful lot. "
Very well put.
This is the single most important factor in a successful Raspberry Pi installation. Get a good power supply. The merchants selling Pi kits have the best-tested power supplies. I have a revision 1 Model B, a revision 2 Model B, and one of the newer Model As. The power supply matters much more on the rev 1 Model B than the rev 2 B or Model A.
The second most important factor is that you have to factor the power being drawn by all USB devices plugged into the Pi. I know I don't have to tell people this, but USB hubs must be externally powered, and that hub must also not be providing the power to the Raspberry Pi. Model A doesn't have ethernet so you can use that power for a wireless adapter, BlueTooth, or one of those handy USB Y-cable hubs.
Kriston
> If you want a media player, it's still worth getting. For all other purposes, it's not the board to get anymore.
--To a certain extent, correct. The main draw of the RPi now is the education aspect and the surrounding community, in addition to the price point. The hardware was obsolete practically from day 1, and on top of that it requires a bunch of peripheral hardware to be useful as a standalone PC (monitor, keyboard, optional mouse, networking infrastructure, SD card, power supply.)
--For my purposes (Squid server for entire household - multiple laptops, multiple PCs and a score or so of VMs) I bought a gen1 Cubieboard + SSD -- similar to Pi, but has better hardware specs -- including a SATA port. I recently bought a Cubietruck to replace that, and so far I'm quite happy with it; my electric bill was under $60 recently, and the Cubie is running 24/7. :-)
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??