[Arm-netbook] R-Pi Only Better and More Available?

[Gordan Bobic]

On 05/26/2012 06:20 PM, Alejandro Mery wrote:
> On 26/05/12 19:16, Gordan Bobic wrote:
>> On 05/26/2012 05:35 PM, Tsvetan Usunov - OLIMEX Ltd wrote:
>>>       http://www.reghardware.com/2012/05/22/chip_maker_via_outs_49_dollar_raspberry_pi_alike/
>>>
>>>
>>> this seems to have put RPi team in panic :)
>>
>> As it should.
>>
>> They made a terrible call with just 256MB of RAM (of which you lose 64MB
>> for the GPU), and then proceeded to vigorously defend their decision
>> when _everybody_ told them that this is a _massive_ issue, doubly so on
>> a device with no SATA interface or any other cheap way of achieving
>> reasonably performing swap (100Mbit ethernet means swapping over iSCSI
>> is going to be less than blazing, and a USB SSD like the RC8 costs 3x
>> more than the R-Pi).
>>
>> They made the classical mistake of trying to shave the last couple of $
>> from the price tag and cut so many corners that the product is
>> completely round.
>
> <crowd>OLinuXino A10 with 1GB! OLinuXino A10 with 1GB! OLinuXino A10
> with 1GB! ...</crowd>
>
> joke aside I really don't to see why people compares the raspberry pi
> with that *TX board from via.... maybe because both had everything to be
> great but designed to be a failure?

I suspect the main similarity between them is that they were both 
designed to be cheap before anything else. The Via board seems to be a 
slightly better product at a comparable price. Because the difference 
likely makes a step from "not quite good enough" to "good enough" with a 
few more conveniences added, I suspect it will be a much greater 
success, especially if they can churn them out at a faster rate than the 
Pis. And just that last bit is probably going to make a huge difference 
to popularity - I suspect most people will gladly pay a small price 
premium for something they can have tomorrow vs. a small saving for 
something they can maybe have in 3 months time.

Gordan