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Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ Launched (raspberrypi.org)
New submitter stikves writes: The Raspberry foundation has launched an incremental update to the Raspberry Pi 3 model B: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ . In addition to slight increase (200MHz) in CPU speed, and upgraded networking (802.11ac and Gigabit, albeit over USB2), one big advantage is the better thermal management which allows sustained performance over longer load periods. Further reading: TechRepublic, and Linux Journal.
Am I the only one that still uses the original Raspberry Pi? CPU speed has never been the selling point of em to me.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I would be more satisfied with doubling the ram than the AC wireless.
You mean a GBP30 device that let's you bit-bang GPIO pins at up to 300Khz, run off battery and provide HDMI out and a Linux desktop is pointless for people tinkering with hardware?
I'm no defender of the RPi foundation (there are STILL performance and reliability problems with the USB and Ethernet buses because they are shared and under heavy load you can drop USB packets, they surfaced in the very first models and haven't been fixed and they tried to blame the SD-card, so I ended up sending my own off to a technician at Broadcom) but the devices are getting better all the time. Hell, for GBP30 you can slap RetroPi on them and build an arcade cabinet from the GPIO/USB that can run all kinds of stuff.
P.S. Nobody cares about h/w level programming. The BBC Micro:Bit is a flop. The RPi skips it and goes straight to Scratch on a Linux desktop. Teachers don't have the skills to do the simplest of things like that themselves, let alone teach them.
I speak as someone who works in IT in schools, spent all my youth doing just that, teaching myself Z80 assembly, removing the copy-protection on DOS games via disassembly x86, building circuits, etc.
I was one of the first to get an RPi, and didn't like it because it was "too easy", too powerful and too boring - but it's WAY over the heads of the average school child even with years of lessons. They'll turn it on, boot up Linux, click around, get bored, done. There's no way that even 1% of the RPi's that have been sold have ever had any amateur electronic hardware ever connected to them in a school. Schools will buy pre-made modules, or nothing at all. And if it hasn't got a lesson plan to go with it, forget it.
The RPi was sold on but NEVER got any focus as "educational kit for schools to teach electronics", they never even tried and they didn't even go to BETT (the biggest UK IT in schools exhibition), they have no interest in getting them there. It was my complaint about them from day one, that they NEVER did what they would need to do to get into schools. They just relied on "someone clever will do that bit for us", and it's never materialised. A good teacher could do it, but they could do it with anything and probably wouldn't choose an RPi (too many distractions readily available). There is NOTHING for teachers, and most teachers don't even know what they are, and even IT teachers wouldn't be able to image an SD card and boot them by themselves without a tutorial.
But as a hobbyist device, these things are fabulous, now. They could be a lot better, too. That's the point of them... a 1.4GHz battery-powered ARM kit that can bit-bang. Brilliant for me. Useless for teaching anyone anything about electronics or hardware that you couldn't just teach on a PC itself.
Honestly, nobody is going to officially teach the bits that you and I would like kids to learn, ever again, in any kind of serious depth. They just won't, because the teachers are two generations down from people who didn't understand it. Geeks don't go into teaching because the stuff they end up having to teach is SO DULL it's unbelievable.
Unless you show a kid it yourself, it's not going to happen with any level of Micro:Bit, Arduino, .NET Gadgeteer, RPi or anything else ever released. Honestly, it's just not.
The problem is, the Pi has something a lot of other boards don't - a community. Most alternative Pi boards are released with outdated software and that's it - the manufacturer stops supporting it and it rots. But eh Raspberry Pi is well supported and kept up to date by a while pile of people, who are able and willing to help people with their problems.
The Pi's greatest asset is not the hardware, but the fact there's a huge community willing to help you out.