Raspberry Pi 3B+ Launches With Faster CPU, Dual-Band 802.11ac, Faster Ethernet

[starshipeleven]

starshipeleven They're being dropped by distros because their hardware is so out of date. Do they run a mainline kernel, yet?

Many NXP designs, also Marvell SoCs do.

Alwinner SoCs lack GPU drivers (because Mali) and probably also the media accelerator, but work fine with mainline otherwise.

[tildearrow]

Typo:

The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is lauching today as the usual $35 USD price point.

[starshipeleven]

I do agree, but I would like to point out that it was originally designed for education purposes.

And that's where most of the sales go. People that want to do small projects where an Arduino does not cut it.

I find the little addition very nice, and I really like their approach of iterating over the product. I would like to buy one, but if the past is anything to go by, these will probably retail for ~€50 in the next few months :/

I currently use mine as an access point, and was disappointed with it being only 802.11g (54Mbps). The ac is a VERY nice addition. Are the drivers upstream yet? I am about to send back a TP Link USB ac adapter because of no upstream driver, that would be a nice improvement.

PoE was something that was repeatedly asked for, and seeing it finally made it opens a whole new range of opportunities. I know what my next Access point will be! Just put an Ethernet cable and be done with it. I actually suspect this will really drive up the number of "consumer"-oriented devices that support PoE.

Which makes you one of the "weird" ones that use it for something where it is crap and then praising it for no reason at all.

Really there are quite a few APs with PoE supported by OpenWrt that are much better and have open drivers (either mediatek or qualcomm/atheros) https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_ex...ply*%7E%5D=poe and overall would cost around the same, especially if used.
If it works for you then you just have very low needs.

[starshipeleven]

Believe it or not but $35 is still a lot of money in some parts of the world where people cant afford a PC and Internet access is spotty, so like AC doesnt matter. Unfortunately the Pi didnt reach/educate those people and the community is mostly spoiled rich kids making rfid/bluetooth enabled cat doors.. ok, so maybe i wanna make one of those myself, but still.. frickin' alley cats keep sneaking in. 🤬

Places where people can't afford a PC and internet access is spotty does not have a pressing need for programmers, so it's not an issue.

It's the developed world that needs programmers and has to attract young people to programming somehow.

[schmidtbag]

Really? Nobody is going to point out the flawed name? This is a revision of the RPi 3 on Pi day, and yet they aren't calling it the "Raspberry Pi 3.14"? Seriously, they're not going to have another opportunity for such a name...

Anyway... I agree with those saying that people are being too whiny and picky about a $35 computer. Sure, an extra GB of RAM and another USB host would be nice, but this is meant to be a hobbyist product, not a PC replacement. It's equipped hardware is perfectly adequate for its intended purposes.

[andre30correia]

same board with a better wifi only, I put mine rpi at smae 1.4/1.5 without problems

[willmore]

Anyway... I agree with those saying that people are being too whiny and picky about a $35 computer. Sure, an extra GB of RAM and another USB host would be nice, but this is meant to be a hobbyist product, not a PC replacement. It's equipped hardware is perfectly adequate for its intended purposes.

If people only used it for education, then I don't think it would get the hate that it receives. Instead, people us it for all kinds of tasks for which it is not appropriate and at which it performs poorly. And when someone dares to point out that it's not a good solution for all problems, they get jumped on with the "well, that's not what it's for" arguement. Yeah, no kidding, that's what people are saying.

With 14 million of them out there, they've spread well beyond education--if they're even used for that purpose anymore at all. So, it's time either to stop making them, people to stop using them, or for a better device to be released by the Foundation that is appropriate for the tasks people want to use them for. Until then, they will rightly be criticized for their flaws.

[Hadrian]

They have sold over 14 000 000 raspberry pi units, as Liam Tung from znet.com reports. I think people are not unreasonable.

Not only 14 Million, but the Pi Foundation sold 19 Million Pis so far. (And 9 Million of them are Pi3.)

Pi co-founder Mr. Eben Upton wrote today :

If you’ve been a Raspberry Pi watcher for a while now, you’ll have a bit of a feel for how we update our products. Just over two years ago, we released Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. This was our first 64-bit product, and our first product to feature integrated wireless connectivity. Since then, we’ve sold over nine million Raspberry Pi 3 units (we’ve sold 19 million Raspberry Pis in total), which have been put to work in schools, homes, offices and factories all over the globe.

And by the way, for every-day small office tasks the Pi is a nice desktop Linux machine. Libreoffice, Vivaldi, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Evince, etc: these applications work well and fast enough on a Pi2 or better Pi3. My wife happily uses a Pi3 every day.

[schmidtbag]

If people only used it for education, then I don't think it would get the hate that it receives. Instead, people us it for all kinds of tasks for which it is not appropriate and at which it performs poorly. And when someone dares to point out that it's not a good solution for all problems, they get jumped on with the "well, that's not what it's for" arguement. Yeah, no kidding, that's what people are saying.

With 14 million of them out there, they've spread well beyond education--if they're even used for that purpose anymore at all. So, it's time either to stop making them, people to stop using them, or for a better device to be released by the Foundation that is appropriate for the tasks people want to use them for. Until then, they will rightly be criticized for their flaws.

By that logic, that's like criticizing a hammer for not being good at acting as a screwdriver. Just about every household has a hammer, but being common is not an excuse to use it for a different purpose. "Yeah but a hammer can push in nails, so it should be able to push in screws too" may be true, but that's not a reason to use a hammer instead of a screwdriver.
The Pis are no different. Yes, you can use it as a PC or a media center, but that's not what it was built for, so of course it's inadequate. You have a right to want more, but you are not righteous in complaining.
Note how everyone who uses a Pi properly doesn't have issues.

If people want more RAM, buy a platform with more RAM. If you want SATA, buy a platform with SATA. They exist.

[WolfpackN64]

If people only used it for education, then I don't think it would get the hate that it receives. Instead, people us it for all kinds of tasks for which it is not appropriate and at which it performs poorly. And when someone dares to point out that it's not a good solution for all problems, they get jumped on with the "well, that's not what it's for" arguement. Yeah, no kidding, that's what people are saying.

With 14 million of them out there, they've spread well beyond education--if they're even used for that purpose anymore at all. So, it's time either to stop making them, people to stop using them, or for a better device to be released by the Foundation that is appropriate for the tasks people want to use them for. Until then, they will rightly be criticized for their flaws.

To be fair, many people criticise them unfairly, wanting features that'd jump the cost, wanting another chipset that would imply proprietary graphics drivers and generally ranting on a mid-generation update that we didn't even expect.