the measure is primarily intended to prevent third parties from buying lower-capacity boards, replacing their RAM with cheaper parts of uncertain origin and then reselling the modified hardware as a higher-capacity model. The company argues that such modified boards have not undergone its validation process and could subsequently generate support requests if unstable memory is blamed on the company.
The solution to this decidedly rare problem is authorized resellers, not an arbitrary block on a very technically demanding upgrade.
That’s assuming this is the actual problem though. If the problem is actually “We want to make more money by charging extra for ‘enthusiast models’” then this is the correct tactic to ensure that you aren’t undercut by cheap labor.
Their excuse definitely smells like bullshit. It just seems they want to do the Apple thing of making sure they get the money for the upgrade, plus a premium. Except even Apple has a technical reason they don’t allow upgrades, which Raspberry Pi doesn’t.
I’d love to hear the technical reasons.
If I have a honest repair shop that I trust, with proper knowledge and tools, and with ram that I provide, I should be able to do whatever I want. And should be the same for fingerprint reader, and screen, and CPU.
shittification of technology by the ai companies much less innovation much higher cost much higher inflation caused by ai NOT deflation as elon and trump promised by ai. more gas lighting more hot air. less and less productivity.
also raspberry pi is made for the DIY community else just buy a PC delusional doesn’t even know what their product is and was built for. my how the new culture are so far away from its roots after getting popular. this is why never ever let them become too big to not care about their core like all fang stonks and nvda google meta apple microsoft amazon all need to be canceled culturally. have no loyalty to any of them unless they give much better prices and product the answer is no and lower your prices.
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Are there any companies that make comparable products? I’ve been thinking of making a simple and small and low power media computer and I’d rather it not be a raspberry pi anymore
Orange Pi, Banana Pi, plenty of other Chinese SBC makers who products don’t necessarilly have names ending in Pi. Tons of those in places like Aliexpress. You can even try a Risk-V architecture if you’re daring.
The problem is that their english language support is inferior, as is the software stack, plus the ecosystem is a lot smaller so there’s a lot less info on those from other people out there. That said, as far as I can tell all of them have at least one Linux distro (at the very least ARMbian), some having more distros.
Still, it would be fine if all you want is a small computer with HDMI to turn it into a media player using Linux and something like Kodi.
Alternativelly, just get a Mini-PC with a low power intel chip like the N100 - which is actually cheaper than a Raspberri Pi 5 whilst being more powerful and with better peripheral compatibility since it has a PC architecture - and put the Linux with Kodi in it. Sure, it uses more power because it’s not ARM, but not actually that much more (15w vs 8w for a Pi, if I remember it correctly).
Raspberri Pi devices are maybe twice the price of other devices with equivalent hardware, which means that the low-end low-power Mini-PCs are cheaper and yet more powerful and compatible than the high end Pi.
I have a mini PC just like that at home working as a TV Media Player (which a nice remote control and everything) and I even use it as a home server and home nas (remotelly controlled via web interfaces and SSH) since it’s has far more power than needed for just being a media player.
Also, limited support, both in community size and time. Those Chinese manufacturing companies come and go like docker containers. They spin one up to sell some product for a while, then when they’re done they dissolve it. If you want any support, you’re on your own.
It’s hard to imagine exactly what kind of person would want to build their own Linux media server but also actually needs to contact tech support for hardware they own outright.
Half the fun anyway is getting it to work at all, the other half is tweaking and getting it to work exactly the way you want.
I’m a $50-$100 “mystery Thinkpad from eBay” kind of guy. From what I gather, there are lots of us. Exactly zero times have I thought “oh but what if I need to contact Lenovo?” LMAO
This. I have literally never “contacted” customer support for anything besides opening an RMA ticket.
I mean community support, as in the number of people using them and have experience, who know what works and what doesn’t.
Tech support in the sense of stuff like bios updates is important too.
