Raspberry Pi Sky high
DigitalBob
Posts: 1,487
I was looking at buying a new Raspberry Pi, but I can't believe the pricing. The Pi 4 is about $124. My last Pi 3 was about $40 a year ago and now the Pi 3 is around $85. Pi inflation. The pico is about $6.
Comments
And mostly unavailable. Consider yourself lucky if you actualy can buy one these days.
On the other hand, for general computing I can't see a point in buying one when for the same amount of money you can buy a 3 to 5 year old laptop in excellent condition.
If you need it for a project then that's a different story. Even worse, if one needs it in volumes for some piece of commercial equipment.
Because of the unavailability with supply chain issues, we have moved to using a Touch Screen monitor with Linux system and WiFi built in. The combined approach comes out to about the same as a RasPi + Monitor. The current flavor of choice is an "American Megatrends".
The PC industry is still a bit chaotic too. Although supply of some parts is better in last few months, there is lack of choices and prices haven't really come back down where I live. And now the news is manufacturers are already scaling back because of lack of demand. The outlook ain't too rosy just yet.
Bought a CanaKit P4/8GB about 6 months ago. But as a kit of course. Availability was not an issue, depending on the kit, but removing prices of the lumped in stuff worked out to about $75USD for the actual Pi itself, pretty reasonable I guess. Used most of the parts directly and some went into other projects, but this method worked to get the 8GB version. But the biggest thing is go with a supplier you either know or have recourse against (card protection, etc.) The CanaKit brand has worked for me in the past so not a hard choice to use them. But there are still a lot of scalpers and shifty sh__sters out there. Buyer beware.