[cgwahl]

ODROID-X is like a quad-core Raspberry Pi for $129

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/o...-129-20120712/

[WiskyT]

I have an old emachine dinosaur that I use for an entertainment system in my reloading room. I listen to music, watch hulu etc on it. Video is mediocre. Some day it will be obsolete, though everything works with it running Ubuntu 10.04. When the time comes where it is no longer serviceable, I will replace it with something cheap. I figured I would get a used box that is more current, like 5 years old instead of 10 years old like the one I am using now. Should I start thinking along the lines of something like the Odroid you linked above? Are machines like that the wave of the future for cheap computers?

[cgwahl]

I think it can be. Or at the very least between the little boards and the USB computers, they'll fill certain market or two.

Most people probably use a computer like you (dink around on the internet, play music, do email, word processing). They don't really need a powerful computer unless they play games on it. Sure, it might take 30 seconds or longer to load something as opposed to 5 or 10, but you're possibly saving yourself hundreds of dollars for sacrificing a little time. Then again, since the SD cards are solid state, you probably wouldn't really be sacrificing much in time.

It does come at a price though. It won't be portable like a laptop or netbook (yet at least, maybe in the future it can be somehow). But the bigger issue is drive space. Similar to a netbook, you probably won't have a large drive (or SD card in this case), since more space can mean a lot of money (although SD cards are getting cheaper). So you will probably need an external drive or another computer to act as a server to store files. Another option might be to utilize online storage (cloud service) such as Google Music/Drive or possibly Amazon.


Time will tell. I have a NAS so local server won't be an issue. And I am waiting for a few Raspberry Pi's to ship that I want to use as a media center for a couple TVs and a replacement for a netbook that I want to use to develop on. For now, it's probably just a novelty, but I can see these things possibly being a lot more.

[WiskyT]

These things are tiny. Tiny anything usually means expensive. In this case, these things are cheap. Tiny for me would be a small benefit. Cheap is a big plus. I would use it as a PC. I'd duct tape the thing to my desk, plug in the peripherals, and use it as a cheap desk top computer. Right now, they don't have enough storage and RAM for even me. But, technology always seems to mature into much more features and lower price. In two years, I could see these things having the 3G of RAM and 100G of storage and costing $50.00. So for a few bucks, and a free install of Linux, I would have a tower with better specs than my dinosaur.