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good alternatives to raspberry pi which are cheap and efficient?
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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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Compact business desktops like others have mentioned are great. Depending on your needs, I also like using older or used laptops. They’re still power efficient if you get a recent processor model, people sell them for fairly cheap used, and sometimes having an attached keyboard and display is more convenient than having to hook up a crash cart
Plus it's got a built-in UPS
It'll become a spicy UPS if you leave the power plugged in all the time though.
Why?
Laptop batteries are not designed to be at 100% charge for a long period of time. Same as phone batteries. They'll expand and become a fire hazard. Batteries that have expanded look a bit like a pillow so they're commonly referred to as "spicy pillows".
Are you sure this is true with nowadays batteries too? My laptop is almost always connected to the power supply, is about 5 years old and the battery still seams to be in a good shape.
Take it off the charger and see if you get the claimed battery life. Maybe you will, or maybe your 3+ hours of battery time runs out in less than one.
It doesn't last as much as it did when it was new (about 5/6 hours), and that's expected, but it still last about 3/4 hours and it seems pretty decent to me!
Are they cheap though? Maybe in the grand scheme of things.
Like $200 for one Thinkpad versus five raspberry pis.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a Raspberry Pi for $40, the demand still has prices sky-high
I thought we had moved past that
Have we though?
Yep, looks like we have. You linked the highest tier RPi available from CanaKit and it's in stock and still being sold at the same price it was when it released in ~~2019~~ 2020, $75 (I forgot the 8GB model released a year later).
Still more expensive than some old Laptop you get from while not being necessarily better.
Sure, but the shortage is over at least (and the Pi is more versatile if that matters to your project).
When they are in stock, they are selling at normal retail prices again. The stock is still only lasting for hours to days unfortunately.