“My Pi3 works like a charm and it is distinctly snappier than my two Pi2’s at startup, web browsing and a little bit faster when compiling. I like it - it’s practically good enough to be my main computer but isn’t since I’m always tinkering with it just because it is fun! The only snag was a problem with the Raspbian version that was available just when I got my Pi3. It was hanging at startup. When I updated to the current version of Raspbian a few days later everything worked just fine.”
“Although I have had the pi3 for less than a month this is going to be a long review. Let me first make clear that so far I have only used the standard Raspbian distribution. I have not had time to experiment with other distributions or operating systems.
I already owned a pi from some time ago and I knew its limitations so first thing was to see if it could serve as a desktop replacement. This means three things. Email, web browsing and some word processing. As far as email goes, the results were excellent. The claws client is fast, responsive and functional. In fact, I liked its simplicity so much that I installed it on my usual laptop and use it instead of thunderbird. Word processing with liber office was ok but I have to confess I did not give it anything too demanding to do. The lightweight browsers that came with Raspbian were not really cutting the mustard (sooner or later you get on something they can not handle) so I decided to install Firefox (iceweasel) to see how it would cope. With a lot of patience, it can get by but frankly maybe one should wait for the next pi version to claim that it can serve as a proper desktop replacement.
The usual task of the original pi was to run wolfram scripts (mathematica). This was nothing sort of miraculous. It works and it is not slow. It is still better with command line but it is now fast and functional and even using the Mathematica gui works if you really want to do so.
In addition, since there is an inbuilt wireless card, I set it up as an access point for my home network. Fantastic with all laptops, some annoying lag with an Amazon fire stick ( the jury is still out on whether it is the pi or the stick that causes it) and fine with YouTube on a Sony smart TV. All that while it runs wolfram scripts at the same time. You do not need a powered USB hub for a wifi dongle. It is on board and the range is decent!
Finally, I found a rather novel use. I write scripts that use more than one language (Rscript with Python and bash wrappers). Checking the efficiency of coding improvements on fast computers is not easy as it is hard to accurately measure execution time. The relative (but not excessive like its ancestor) slowness of the pi3 means that any execution time coding improvements are visible to the naked eye so as to speak. You just need a timer. You can see your improvements work in real time.
The pi3 also cooperates with 64GB SD cards so you can even use it to back up your files.
As I said, I have not had time to experiment with anything other than Raspbian. When I find some time, I will get another SD card and experiment with something else. I think that so far it has proved its worth in less than 4 weeks.”
