Speaking of "hand-me-down", the pi kind of kills the used/junker PC marketplace for little experimental projects, when you can work on your project instead of debugging old/worn out hardware for only $40 or so. Also it uses about 1/10th the power of a repurposed desktop, so why not.
For an experiment, I could pick up a free, dusty, worn out desktop that draws 100 watts and stick a new small/tiny hard drive in it for about $50 and have a giant paperweight that needs hardware troubleshooting, or spend the same cash on something tiny that draws about as much power as a clock radio and is new so presumably more reliable.
Its hard to justify picking up junker "free" PCs in the era of the pi.
Speaking of "hand-me-down", the pi kind of kills the used/junker PC marketplace for little experimental projects, when you can work on your project instead of debugging old/worn out hardware for only $40 or so. Also it uses about 1/10th the power of a repurposed desktop, so why not.
For an experiment, I could pick up a free, dusty, worn out desktop that draws 100 watts and stick a new small/tiny hard drive in it for about $50 and have a giant paperweight that needs hardware troubleshooting, or spend the same cash on something tiny that draws about as much power as a clock radio and is new so presumably more reliable.
Its hard to justify picking up junker "free" PCs in the era of the pi.