$35 LAN Party...

[Anthony de Boer]

Kevin Cozens wrote:
> On 13-02-02 07:46 PM, Molly Tournquist wrote:
> > But, to be very blunt, the core hassles are lugging in a monitor and
> > keyboard for each player, but more importantly the monitors are also
> > the majority of the component cost and also the most fragile.
> 
> Lugging around a monitor and keyboard is the same hassle one would have 
> with any LAN party. The main difference being is that a Pi is a much 
> easier to deal with than lugging around a computer in a tower case.
> 
> Using a monitor from a car backup camera system, and a mini wireless 
> keyboard with built-in mouse pad means an entire computer system can fit 
> in a small back or backpack. I have seen these monitors avaialable in 
> 3.5", 4.3", and 7". The caveat is that the resolution is very low. About 
> 480x234 on all of them (even on the 7"). You wouldn't want to be reading 
> a lot of text on a screen that small but it would be ok for some 
> graphics based programs.

Just get yourself any reasonable netbook and you've got all that in a
package you can flip open with far less hassle than plugging together
a bunch of components.  Juggling a Pi with all that just isn't viable.

Granted, being able to go somewhere up north with a nice big flatscreen
and a Model M keyboard and be able to fit everything else you need to
do some coding in your back pocket could still be a Pi application.
But if you're hauling a pile of stuff then a bigger computer works too.

The Pi shines mostly for being cheap and tiny and having GPIO pins.

Note also that the latest Intel thing about them getting out of the
traditional desktop-board racket is not because desktops are dead, but
rather that the ATX form factor is a huge waste of real estate: Intel can
do all it wants to do for a high-end machine on a four-inch-square board
nowadays.  And that's only about double the size of a Pi.

-- 
Anthony de Boer
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