@hippy hit the nail right in the head.Perhaps. But we are assured that a Pi 5 ($60) plus official case ($10) and Pi 4B 3A PSU ($8) is good enough as a desktop replacement for many people. That is just $78. Choosing 8GB, using the Pi 5 PSU, adding HAT's and SSD's, may make that a better desktop replacement but don't seem strictly necessary.There is no such thing as a $60 Pi5 once you equipped it with the necessary case, power supply, hats, SSDs, etc...If a $60 Pi 5 does the job well enough for what I wanted I know what I'd chose and have $240 left in my pocket.
Whether it will do the job for the OP I don't know. I suspect not.
But there would be extra cost in having a built-in screen and keyboard, plus track pad if desired, for a laptop.
The biggest problem though is that neither Pi 5, nor any other Pi SBC, is designed for laptop use and they don't have or support the features which would be desirable for a luggable, portable desktop, and certainly not for what one would expect of any laptop.
And then there is the added issue of whether a Pi-based desktop or laptop can run Windows, and Windows applications, if a user desires that.
Does it make sense to attempt to build a Windows laptop using a Pi ? Not to me, other than for proving it can be done. And that seems to have already been proven, albeit at a cost significantly higher than buying an off the shelf Windows laptop.
I wouldn't even consider Pi to be a desktop replacement for anyone who wants to run Windows and Windows applications.
Wha could you possibly do with a Pi based laptop that I can't already do with an existing laptop?
Even for the peripherals, there are USB to I2C/serial/can/spi dongles out there, and you can even whip up your own with a micro controller or another.
As for price, US$150.00 max for me. Thas including the pi and the PSU and a screen. Bang for the buck is just too important to me. Anything higher than that, i'd just put a bit more money into it and take an x86 laptop off the shelf from a bit box store. It will even come with it's own builtin UPS.
Statistics: Posted by memjr — Wed Jun 26, 2024 3:04 am