“Having a stable of very early B version Pi's in various roles around the house, (Aquarium Monitor; Internet Radio and KODI media player) I'd been concentrating on them doing something, not sitting in drawers.
I saw a Pi-2 for the first time whilst visiting the grandsons and decided to upgrade - and then the Pi-3 appears out of no-where! (OK, I know it took years to develop)
First impressions, from a standing start:- Very impressive. significantly faster than the Pi-2. WiFi very easy to set up - Bluetooth is a little more tricky but getting better. It certainly found my Sony Ericsson Bluetooth speaker with a little fiddling.
The USB hub is now relegated to the just-in-case pile as four onboard USB ports plus WiFi and Bluetooth is enough for anyone, right? ;-)
The Pi-3 is usable as a desktop machine by all but the most hard-core or fastidious user, it is now my desktop development machine - the one I use to try out ideas before embedding the components and software into one of the other Pi's.
Perhaps there should be a Pi-3 challenge?:- Use a Pi-3 as your desktop machine exclusively for a week - and see what you can and can't do with it in real life.
It just gets better and better as the OS is fine-tuned...
SP
PS: Get the 2.5 Amp power supply if you're going to push the USB ports.”
“I was happy to get this. The only thing I was surprised to not get it in box that I had seen online but simply in bubble bag. Everything works except I have not tried the blutooth. Wifi works well as well as the Ethernet.”
“Works great (as expected). The additional computing power allows to decode up to 720p HEVC videos (high bitrates might be a bit of a problem).
However: you REALLY NEED a heat sink. Without it the core will quickly reach 80C and clock down from 1.2 GHz to 0.6 and be slower than the old RPi2”
