Technology

This makes sense. Hear me out.

1. A CM5 is a device designed to be embedded into other devices. I believe most of their sales come from just that- companies that make other things, and build a CM5 into them rather than design their own control board.

2. As you go up through the model tiers, the price increases faster than the added price of memory. IE, if the 2gb one is $20, and the difference between a 2gb memory chip and an 8gb memory chip is $10, the 8gb unit isn't $30 it's $60. You pay RPi a premium for the high end products.

3. Desoldering RAM off a production PCB is something no hobbyist is going to bother with. BUT, a company buying 10,000 of these to build into their product MIGHT find it cost effective to setup a production line to do so. And they could probably resell the 2gb chips.

Point being- while I don't like this, and I don't like the ideas it represents, I also understand why they are doing it. It's not about us, the hobbyists. It's about the manufacturers that build compute modules into their products.

Another win for mini PCs. Pis priced themselves out of the market since pi4-pi5 imo

I can get a second hand mini pc or Optiplex for much cheaper, and with quick sync

So do we own the pi that we bought or does Raspberry Pi?

The behaviour is particularly interesting because physically replacing the memory on a Raspberry Pi is already well outside the scope of an ordinary upgrade.

I mean... aren't hackers the target audience for Raspberry Pis?

Yeah, if the reasoning they give isn't just straight bullshit, then I guess I don't want to see them drown in support tickets. But it also seems like this move runs pretty counter to the whole point of the Raspberry Pi.

(Plus, can't resellers buy 2GB models, redo some of the screen printing, and sell them as 8GB models without even trying to upgrade the RAM to 8GB? That seems at least as bad as getting a Raspberry Pi with a dodgy 8GB RAM chip.)

I'm not really familiar with this industry, but as far as I know, there are quite a few pi-named alternatives from China. Banana Pi, Orange Pi, Lichee Pi, and there are probably more. Unless there's something only Raspberry Pi can offer, this looks suicide to me.

I can't solder to save my life, but this still makes me take them off the list for potential future boards.

Granted, I prerfer RISC-V where posible, but a few things still need ARM.

Now I need to look around for a alternative to two Pi5s, the Pi4, and Pi Zero that were on my list.

You'll know it isn't a genuine Raspberry Pi because it won't cost $35... right...?

Radxa and orange pi are better anyway.