[GTALUG] Raspberry Pi

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: William Park via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| No Raspberry Pi is going to match that.
| --William
| 
| On 3/4/21 10:25 PM, Aruna Hewapathirane via talk wrote:
| > Model name:            Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-4130 CPU @ 3.40GHz

As William top posted, that is still a perfectly repectable processor.
Much faster than any Raspberry Pi, as far as I know.

Why did you think your system was badly obsolete?  It isn't.  It's 
limited in a few little ways.

- No support for NVMe SSDs (but SATA SSDs are fast enough)

- Without a graphics board, it has trouble supporting UltraHD monitors

- fewer video CODECs are supported in hardware.  This might make video 
  conferencing a little laggy.

- slower than current CPUs, but not enough to be a veto for use

Why the heck did you think a Raspberry Pi would be a performance
upgrade?

Your system will have much faster conventional I/O.

How much RAM do you have?  If your system has too little RAM, you can add 
more.  You cannot do that with a Raspberry Pi.

If your system only has a hard disk drive, you can surely boost the
performance by adding an SSD (but only SATA, not NVMe).  There are
plenty of modest SSDs for a low price.

Here are a few examples.  I have not carefully shopped for these.
I've only looked on Amazon.ca.  This is only intended to show you the
landscape of the 2.5" SSD market.

If you are really really short of money, this would probably work:
<https://www.amazon.ca/TC-SUNBOW-Internal-Desktop-Advertising/dp/B073TVJPDT/>

- $29.99

- bottom tier brand: unknown reliablilty, but probably OK

- only 120GB, but that is quite workable, especially if you keep your
  HDD.  I run full Fedora, without much local data, in 32GB.

- free shipping (good) but from China (slow)

- you can click on different sizes and get different prices.


Here's a better brand and larger drive:

<https://www.amazon.ca/Kingston-Digital-240GB-SA400S37-240G/dp/B01N5IB20Q/>

- $44.95

- 240GB

- good brand but, if I remember correctly, surprisingly slow for an
  SSD

- free shipping available because cost is more than $35.  Fairly quick
  delivery


Here's a still better drive (faster, longer life, larger):

- $84.99

- 500 GB

- has DRAM which cuts down a lot of wear on the SSD and makes it
  faster.  I would *guess* that the other drives are DRAMless.