Comment by squarefoot
19 days ago
$700? Here's one with 4GB RAM, 128GB eMMC and Linux already installed at $87,49. New.
https://t.ly/S-OW6 (shortened Amazon link)
Now the 4020 isn't certainly a monster, but I can assure you it's way more performant than a RPi. Also, bear in mind that, as is the case with many Chinese products, those mini PCs are produced in huge quantities and sold under at least a dozen different ever changing "brands". Don't let the name "Wo-We" make you think this is something deemed to disappear in a few months; the name could certainly be thrown away but the product will most certainly reincarnate under another "brand".
Linux already installed from a Chinese vendor.
I guess it’s subsidized by the malwares that come preinstalled.
OK I understand the RPi must have very good press, but nitpicking every part of a message just to find something to attack isn't constructive. Linux preinstalled means that Linux works out of the box, that is, you don't even have to search around for Linux compatibility with any of the peripherals inside that mini PC. Of course I would never ever trust anything preinstalled, neither Linux nor Windows, just as I got rid of stock Android on my recently bought Pixel 7 in favor of GrapheneOS like 2 hours after unboxing it. I only meant about compatibility, certainly I wasn't suggesting that anyone runs unknown software from China.
You misunderstood. My comment had nothing to do with the meat of your post. I was only referring to Linux being preinstalled on Chinese hardware as being downright dangerous.
I got the $700 figuring by looking up the list price of one of the mini PC's mentioned in the article, which use an Intel i5-6500 or AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 2200GE CPU (which each have 4 cores @ 3.6Ghz), I think if they'd compared against a 2 core 2.8Ghz Celeron, it would have been more evenly matched. The Raspberry Pi 5 beats the 4020 in both single and multi-core performance in this benchmark:
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-raspberry_pi_5_b_b...
Don't let the name "Wo-We" make you think this is something deemed to disappear in a few months; the name could certainly be thrown away but the product will most certainly reincarnate under another "brand".
Does that matter? If it dies in 2 months and I can't find the manufacturer because it's operating under a different name now, is that any different than if the manufacturer folded completely?
I'm not sure whether to assume you either are clueless or whether to assume you're actively working to try to sabotage perception.
No one's gonna recommend an ancient middling mini-PC that costs vastly more than a modern current mini-PC.
Either go on the secondary market & get this old PC for under $100. Or go get some modern Ryzen mini-PC for $500. Or a decent n100 for somewhere in between, especially if you insist on new for some reason.
The manufacturer is the same, what dies is the brand name; the very same product is just being packaged in a box with another name. I mean, you shouldn't place too much importance in the name, just look at the real iron inside the box. We, as westerners, are used to give a lot of importance to brand names, possibly because it comes from the old times when brand names identified products with the families that created them; that is completely different from how it works in far east today.
The reason I give importance to the brand name is because if the company has been around for a decade (or many decades), it's likely to still be around in a year or two to give me support when the product fails.
If the company resurrects itself every 6 months under a different name, then there's effectively no warranty on the product and there's no reason to think that it's built to be long lasting, since even bad reviews won't show up under the new brand name.