[Coco] Raspberry Pi

[Bill]

That's good to know. Right now, I'm working with a HP Pavilion w/128mb and a
800Mhz Celeron. So, doesn't seem to be much of a step up (if it IS a step
up.)


Thanks
Bill


-----Original Message-----
From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On
Behalf Of Aaron Wolfe
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 1:56 PM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] Raspberry Pi

It's pretty easy and inexpensive but only for some definitions of "usable".

Remember that although the Pi is an impressive amount of computing
power for the price and worth every penny by most anyone's measure, it
is not anywhere near as capable as even the cheapest desktops sold
today.  In fact, many computers that are
retired/junked/recycled/thrown out would outperform the Pi as a
desktop machine.

The disk access is painfully slow when running off SD card and not a
lot better off a usb hard drive.  The GPU is unaccelerated when
running standard desktop applications, and the memory is fairly tight
due to it being shared between video and system ram.  It often
struggles to handle things like browsing large web pages or having
several open at once.  Open Office is quite sluggish, etc, etc.

If you want a general purpose computer for cheap, I think you would do
better looking for PCs at garage sales or dumpster diving :)  OTOH, if
you need a very low power, very small dedicated server or have other
specialized applications that fit into the Pi's profile, you can't go
wrong with one.