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[-] ComradeRachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 hours ago

Too expensive for 16gb ram and sadly I don’t think it’s fully the pi’s fault. It just uses one of the most in demand chips right now

[-] ElChinchilla@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Thank god I'm too ignorant and stupid to have learned how to build pcs - sad^/s^

[-] ballgoat@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 hours ago

Ouch. I was hesitant at $160. This is just a no. I’ll buy one if prices ever become sane again.

[-] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 8 points 9 hours ago

Jesus! I bought mine for $29.95 about 15 years ago.

[-] Le_Roi_Est_Mort@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

My first Pi was a Zero. It came free with a PC magazine. It was taped to the cover. I think the retail price then was something like $5

[-] Jiral@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Pi Zeros sell nowadays for 13 EUR. I don't know when you got yours but it might be just regular inflation since then.

[-] utopiah@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

You probably meant a Pi 1 which even though does share the name is in terms performance is a lot more than 10x better, see e.g. https://the-diy-life.com/raspberry-pi-drag-race-pi-1-to-pi-5-performance-comparison/

I'm not saying anybody needs a RPi 5 ... but it's also not fair to compare to something related yet different.

[-] Lightsong@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

Everyone here talking about raspberry pi and I still to this day have no idea what I can do with one.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

I have one setup as an ad blocker (pihole)

I was going to make a bookshelf with one to control the lights.

[-] dev_null@lemmy.ml 9 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

It's just a computer. You can do whatever you need a computer for. Browse Lemmy on it. Play video games on it. Use it as a server. Make it run an ad video on the TV in your store window.

Whatever you need a PC for. If you don't need a PC for something, you don't need a Raspberry Pi.

The entire point of the Raspberry Pi was that it was a very very cheap PC, and it's no longer cheap, so nowadays there is definitely less reason to buy one.

[-] Jiral@lemmy.world 7 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

That is just one of the possible uses and not the most important one. Pi's have two things that regular PCs don't have. They have a direct integration of an GPIO port where you can easily connect individual wires as needed and they have a huge community and a lot of tutorials and also software support for all kinds of tinker jobs that can make use of that GPIO port.

These two reasons have not gone away and for many of those, you don't need the most expensive PI with 16GB of RAM. A Pi Zero for 14 EUR or a Pi Zero 2 for 22 EUR are perfectly fine for that. The platform has plenty of life left but those high end Pi are increasingly crazily priced, mainly because of insane RAM prices.

[-] FjordDan@lemmy.zip 6 points 7 hours ago

It's also a very small and low powered computer. That's valuable in some cases.

And most of them have a GPIO (general-purpose input/output) header for whatever shenanigans people might be up to.

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 2 points 6 hours ago

I use them to run Kodi for streaming media to my TV from my file server. I also would like to run retropie but I can't figure out how to get the scaling to work on my TV.

[-] MapleFantastic5738@lemmy.ca 6 points 9 hours ago

Yeeeeee eah, I priced one out a couple weeks ago from my preferred, local supplier and immediately left the site. It's a shame because I have some Pi3b and a 4 that I'd love to retire. Still functional, but pokey.

I'm betting tied of being priced-out of everything

[-] Bakkoda@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

You can buy used sff/micro computers on eBay for half that.

[-] 0x0@lemmy.zip 6 points 10 hours ago

So much for being cheap and for educational purposes.

[-] gollumsfish@lemmy.zip 8 points 11 hours ago

I don’t understand the hate towards the makers of the Pi. Obviously they didn’t raise the price because they’re greedy.

Fuck Apple, but one thing you need to give them credit for is that over years they didn’t raise their prices once, they even lowered them for the iPhone at one point. And even they needed to raise the prices.

Blame the memory manufacturers for creating a fake shortage because they don’t want to ramp up their production capabilities because they like the high demand.

[-] Le_Roi_Est_Mort@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I’m not sure that Apple is a good example to use here. They just announced their new MacBook - starting at $3,000. Their new cell phone starts at $2,000.

[-] RaccoonBall@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

How much for the base models?

[-] gollumsfish@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

Yes because they raised their prices after not raising them for years and at times even lowering them. I literally explained this. Just a few months ago when the prices weren’t as high they released an entry level MacBook that is more powerful than a baseline M1 at $500. They also released an M1 Mac Mini for $500 that was so good it was sold out constantly because it was by far the cheapest option for decent AI usage.

[-] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 3 points 7 hours ago

You want to bring Apple in this? Apple, with the devices that are three-four times as expensive as they should have to be, built with sub-par quality components, because of course, whilst going so far as to adding crypto keys to their hardware to ensure you can't repair it?

[-] gollumsfish@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

I’m confused where you got that opinion from. You possibly cannot have any experience with Apple products if you seriously believe they’re of poor quality. You won’t be able to find any laptop that meets any MacBook performance and feature wise at that price.

[-] tackleberry@thelemmy.club 5 points 10 hours ago

Apple already sells overpriced devices and other manufacturers are doing the same, this time, in the name of inflation and memory shortages.

[-] gollumsfish@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 hours ago

It’s not 2011 anymore, Apple absolutely dominates the price/quality range. They sell premium devices, and while others sell their premium devices at times at much higher prices, they still don’t even come remotely close.

For example I am constantly on the lookout for a different laptop that provides the features and performance for that price and I always come to the conclusion that there still isn’t. I’ve got a beefy ThinkPad at work (and it’s a really good laptop to) but in terms of real world performance it doesn’t even come close to my baseline M1 MacBook that is over 6 years old.

Apple products are now again overpriced but that’s because of memory.

[-] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 6 points 11 hours ago

I get how parts prices and everything else got more expensive… but that’s just insane. Most I’ve ever paid for a Pi was 40 euros for a model 3. They’ve gotten way too expensive since then. The WHOLE IDEA behind them was cheap and cheerful computing. Did a lot of cool projects with them that just aren’t worth it with expensive hardware.

[-] gerryflap@feddit.nl 2 points 10 hours ago

Whoa that's crazy. Happy that my pi 1 and 2 are still happily chugging along

[-] areakode@riskeratspizza.com 17 points 20 hours ago

The only reason I've ever used Raspberry Pis is because they're cheap as hell. I think $45 is the most I've ever paid for one. Fuck this.

[-] elucubra@sopuli.xyz 5 points 11 hours ago

Yeah, I bought the original Pi 1 (B, o think?) and every version up to a 4, and one zero. I now use them for things like driving my 3d printer, pi hole etc.

I gifted my son a Pi5, and soon regretted it, as I later found out that the fuckers were not using standard USB C power, but a proprietary version of USB C. Fuck their enshitified souls.

[-] areakode@riskeratspizza.com 1 points 7 hours ago

Yup. They gave up on their mission to provide high quality chips at low prices a while back. I still have a Pi4 in use. I have a couple of 3B and 0+. But they're so slow, I'm only going to use them where I need a full computer instead of something like an ESP32. Needless to say, those are all sitting on the shelf because ESP32s are capable of running most of what I need.

[-] blargh513@sh.itjust.works 44 points 1 day ago

May as well just buy a used laptop or desktop.

[-] elucubra@sopuli.xyz 9 points 11 hours ago

Used Mini PCs, brand name, like Lenovo tinys, are now my go to. Slightly larger, but orders of magnitude more capable, and often power sippy.

[-] rekabis@lemmy.ca 2 points 8 hours ago

They still make use of desktop CPUs that can pull 120W when idling and up to 250W under heavy loads. So light on power? Maybe. But power sippy? Not against an M4 Mac, which can be as little as ⅙ as much under a similarly heavy load.

[-] Equinox1289@sh.itjust.works 8 points 21 hours ago

Or a mini pc. 16GB RAM, 500GB NVME ~$300.

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[-] MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zip 15 points 21 hours ago

Unfortunate how bad the last 7 or so years have been market wise for the raspberry pi project. It feels like every time the hardware on one end gets cheaper, some other tech fad squeezes another component price up.

[-] Wils@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Who's the complete fucking idiot buying them at that price? Surely no one is that desperate.

[-] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 17 points 21 hours ago

The base model of Pi5 is $45 USD.

The 16 gig Pi 5 us $385 USD.

If you are using 16 gigs, you should probably using different hardware.

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Man I remember getting pissed I couldnt get a Pi4 for less than $50, paid $30 for my Pi3

[-] heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 32 points 1 day ago

It is now, just a shitty computer. It used to be a learning platform, but that price tag is not a learning price.

[-] RaccoonBall@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 hours ago

Learning starts long before the maxed out 16gb model

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[-] cley_faye@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

At this point we can probably take an efficient full-blown PC in a mini format, and get something sensibly similar for less. It might even be possible to throw some GPIO USB in there if that's what you need.

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this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2026
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