Raspberry Pi 4 Announced With Dual HDMI, USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, V3D Driver Stack

[coder]

In USA, PC is only 31% more expensive.

So it should be at least 31% better, in order to be compelling. Somehow, you cannot seem to understand this. The more expensive thing needs to be better, in order to justify the additional cost.

As for your opinion that PCs *should* not be equipped with USB storage as a primary storage,

Because if you're going to equip it with the same crappy storage as a SBC, then just save money and get the SBC.

that is only an opinion, backed up by nothing. And, quite a biased opinion: it shows that you are just some rich kid from some rich country not taking objectively considerations of the rest of the world.

Now you're just throwing labels, because you cannot win with logic. It's funny how you twist it, since I'm actually the one arguing for the cheaper option, and arguing that the PC must offer a substantially better value to be compelling. I'm demanding value for money, in other words.

You're actually the one arguing that people should spend more on PCs, so I don't see how that makes me the elitist.

I repeat, USB storage is equally appropriate for either a PC or a SBC.

I repeat: it's not that it's any worse on a PC than SBC - just that it'd be dumb to pay more for the PC if it's just going to be hamstrung by crappy storage.

You are completely ignoring my point about the price of good-performing USB3 storage. It's not cheap. For the price, you can get more performance and capacity with a SATA SSD.

If someone's budget does not permit a good performing USB3 storage, then they should just go with the SBC, unless they have some unique need for the PC. In that case, we're no longer talking about a value argument, which was your original claim.

"memory capacity, and performance", but a PC easily beats any SBC on those points. Specifically, the PC I proposed beats or equals your $80 SBC.

No, your PC had the same memory capacity and you're proposing to use the same storage. Performance-wise, it looks like almost a wash. So, like I said, you're wasting the opportunity to play off the PC's strengths, and instead just spec'ing out a bad PC that costs more than the SBC, while being the same or worse in most areas.

It cannot directly compete on cost, but it competes wery well on cost+features.

It lost on cost, so that leaves just features. And on most features, it loses. That equates to a net-loss on features, too.

Moreover, you are a biased person, at least slightly elitist, and you tend to use flawed logic and flawed arguments.

Name-calling is the surest sign that the facts are not on your side and cannot fully reconcile yourself to this. I accept your concession.

Respond if you want, but know that further instances of name-calling will be flagged.

[coder]

What'd be funny about this, if it weren't so sad, is that this all started with a deeply flawed premise:

ROCKPro64 is a bit too costly (60$). It does have PCIe 4x expansion slot, which is a killer feature. At 60$, perhaps a cheap x86 motherboard would be a better choice.

And now, you're throwing everything at the wall, trying to hide the fact that your original proposition was invalid. Sorry, but I'm done playing along with this farce.

A PC is better, much better than a SBC. It's about all the applications, upgradeability, backwards compatibility. Those features are important, much more than a 31% price increase.

With this, your own words come back to haunt you. If we ignore the shifting goalposts of cost and just take 31%, you wouldn't think that's a small amount if you were buying a car or a house. Your 1st world bias is clear - you don't consider 31% to be a big markup, because you don't consider the absolute price to be substantial. Yet, you accuse me of such a bias, for arguing there needs to be a real, tangible value to justify the increased cost.

And to the extent your argument hinges on upgradablility, you're just conceding that the value isn't there, in the configuration you quoted, without actually having to state what price would be justifiable.

On USB 3.0 flash, Linux boots in about 50 seconds. Firefox starts in 10 seconds (on the first run). The speed is comparable to the speed of HDDs. It's the speed that was sufficiently fast in the past times.

People waited those amounts of time when they had no other choice. The rapid adoption of SSDs, even before their prices started to reach parity with HDDs, is all the evidence you should need that it wasn't "sufficiently fast".

What is the difference, when you connect a USB flash storage to a SBC, what magic thing does "crappy storage" suddenly gain that makes it adequate?

Here are some benchmarks, so you can start to get your head around just how bad cheap USB flash drives really are. And this is far from the worst drive they could've used. I dare say your $15 would've been significantly worse.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ra...est,39811.html

Ideally, Michael would do some testing of his own, using some of the more I/O intensive benchmarks in PTS.

PC wins easily on all most important features: versatility, connectors, upgradeability, software availability, GPU performance. It is a no-contest.

You do not seem to understand the concept of a value judgment. In this scenario, a user's requirements must be satisfied by either option. So, things like connectors and software availability do not count. If they need some connector or software that's PC-only, then they have no choice and the point is moot. I'm not talking about those situations, because that wasn't your original premise.

And as for versatility, what can your base configuration do that a SBC cannot? It seems to me your versatility argument hinges on upgrades, which is just a way of cheating on the quoted price. Compared with your base configuration, the SBC clearly wins on versatility.

[coder]

My question is: what magic thing does "crappy storage" suddenly gain when you connect it to a SBC?

Of course, the premise is that "crappy storage" must gain something when you connect it to a SBC, because it suddenly becomes good enough when you connect it to a SBC.

The performance of USB flash drives is so poor that it always has a noticeable impact on the user experience. If someone cannot afford even to equip a PC with a half-decent SATA drive ($20 will buy a 120 GB Crucial BX500), then you have to ask whether the differential between the PC and SBC wouldn't be better spent on equipping their SBC with better storage, such as a SSD in an external enclosure.

One of the benefits of a PC is that it already has a SATA controller (along with power and a place for the drive), delivering even faster performance at a lower price differential than most SBCs. Your bare-minimum PC, running on a USB flash drive, wastes this benefit. As long as someone can afford it, that would be a bad place to save a couple $.