
Pi-Top: Raspberry Pi Laptop Shell - api
http://pi-top.com/
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blhack
$300 seems _outrageously_ expensive for something like this.

$300 is enough for a chromebook, an arduino (or a raspberry pi!), and a
boatload of motors and servos and things that they're going to enjoy learning
to program with.

This thing doesn't even look like it exposes the GPIO pins. So, really, it's a
$300 for a pretty low end arm linux machine.

Pi-top people: if you're reading this, I'm sorry if that sounds overly harsh.
The thing you've created is a really nice looking, and is definitely something
I would love to buy a stack of an put in my hackerspace, but at that price
point, I can't justify it. It isn't that I don't like what you've done, it's
that I do like what you've done, I just think it is overpriced.

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devopsproject
$300 is enough for an actual computer.

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analog31
Indeed, it's enough for a cheap notebook plus a Raspberry Pi, connected
together via a remote desktop connection.

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Casseres
It just seems expensive to me. I know R&D costs money and it comes with an
educational operating system, but the website doesn't really sell me on why
it's worth $300 as opposed to $200 (a price point at which I would buy two for
my niece and nephew).

For $300 I can buy an inexpensive laptop with a lot more computing power, find
a free educational Linux distro, and teach my niece and nephew how to install
it. Is plugging a few components together in the pi-top worth $100?

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Outdoorsman
From the website for the pi-TopCEED:

>$134.99 with Raspberry pi...$99.99 without Raspberry pi.<<

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Casseres
I'm referring to the laptop version. I guess the battery, hinges, keyboard,
and trackpad fetch a premium. I don't think the CEED is as appealing as the
laptop version (which is probably why it is priced competitively).

Yes, the CEED would still make a great educational tool, but if the child
doesn't use it; it's worthless. My niece and nephew aren't that young any
more, so I have a feeling that the only way they would use it, is if the pi-
tops were in laptop-form.

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undersuit
I have one of these. It's gray, the GPIO is used for LCD backlight control and
battery monitoring, some of the GPIO is exposed on the logic board for other
uses, the display connects via the HDMI port, the keyboard and mouse via USB,
the GPIO scripts are written in python and moveable to your own OS install,
the keyboard is mushy mushy mushy, but I like the trackpad, and I don't use
the provided pi-top OS as I encountered a number of issues even logging in on
the release version.

It's a decent piece of hobby hardware and I should be able to swap in
something like a Odroid-C1+ in the future.

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robohamburger
I wonder if this uses GPIO display. I learned the hard way you don't get any
sort of graphics acceleration on the pi unless you go through the actual hdmi
port.

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eddyg
Related, from a couple days ago, the "NexDock":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11117880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11117880)

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69mlgsniperdad
I can think of at least 69 computers I would rather spend $300 on before a
raspberry pi(top)

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elliotlarson
I like this idea a lot. I can't stand the color. Why acid green?

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kv85s
They also have gray.

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elliotlarson
Ah, you're right! I wish they would have made this clearer.

