Great news for everyone who, like me, enjoys the single board tiny computer: Raspberry Pi4 model B has just been released.

www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/

Personally, as much as I want this new one, I'll probably wait for quite a while before getting it (since it will probably be quite expensive here).

That's a preorder for August 1st, assuming they still hit that date for release. It has not been released yet.

Actually, it has been released, and you can order one right now. The 4GB version is backordered (it seems to be the most popular version), but the 1GB version can be ordered now from some places.

they produced more 1GB ones than 2GB and 4GB ones and shift to other ones if they are sold more.
predicting shift to 4GB in 5...

I've got 2 Pi's myself (Pi1-b? 2-b? don't remember) and they are nice little tinker machines.

A bit disappointed when i try to play anime mp4 videos and the graphics is messed up, meaning either the encoding or specific iteration of the codec wasn't compatible.

Still, the Pi4 is good news :)

I'm still not certain I understand (honestly) what they are or why I should care.

I built myself an easy to use, plug and play console emulation system from mine. All I need to do is plug it on a TV and get a pretty nice experience in old console games.

Drawbacks of the Pi 4 relative to the 3B+:
* Needs a 3.0 amp USB-C power supply. That 2.5 amp micro-USB power supply you have for your PI 3 isn't going to work here.
* Uses more power than a Raspberry Pi 3B+.
* Uses micro-HDMI for video. Your HDMI cables won't fit without an adaptor; that mini-HDMI adaptor you got for your Pi Zero isn't going to work either. (micro-HDMI != min-HDMI, just like with USB)
* Can only boot from microSD card. The 3B+ could boot from USB or Ethernet out-of-the-box (the 3B also could, but only if you first boot it with microSD to set a certain one-time-programmable bit). (These features are planned in future firmware updates.)
* The CPU uses speculative execution, and therefore may be vulnerable to Spectre variants; the CPUs of previous Rasoberry Pi models do not and are therefore not susceptible to that class of vulnerabilities. (Of course, there are mitigations for this.)

Edit: Another one:
* Windows 10 IoT is not available for the Pi 4.

I use one to run Pi-hole (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi-hole) in order to block ads in all my home network, including phones connected via wifi.

Cheap $30 PC

* Runs on ARM (RISC) hardware
* Runs with Linux OS (and Android?)
* Decodes MP4 via hardware
* Does HDMI output
* Good for emulation, file server, video center, possibly security
* Good for hardware tinkering/hobbyists
* Low powered

Mind you it's not a beast of a machine, but for programming, emulation, basic email, it's all the computer you need.

This is great news but now this 43$ tiny dual display desktop computer is in direct competition with the Atomic PI which is bigger but faster and x86.

I read on Reddit that, when Microcenter put them up for pre-order, bots ordered all but -6 of them. (Yes, that is a minus sgn there; I guess the bots were so aggressive that they triggered a race condition.)

Still wrong. The 1/2GB versions are due to ship July 2-5th. Technically, possibly today, but, as of your response, no. Stop making me correct your inaccurate responses.

I'm tinkering around with the fun of remote linux control, using Xming & PuTTY, allowing me to run a linux program natively on windows.

With that in mind, the Raspberry Pi might be great as a terminal machine forwarding to a larger mainframe/computer with the actual muscle and the Pi being the display unit, either via VNC, or plugging in via PuTTY. Plus the minimum OS needed for just forwarding commands and displaying results wouldn't need to be that high.

As of the time I posted it, you could get it from CanaKit and have it ship right away, provided you don't get the 4GB version.

As of now, the 1GB and 4GB versions are backordered (the 4GB version until August), but the 2GB version (which I predicted to be the least popular) can ship now.

Sounds like the Zero W might be the choice for you here; it's even cheaper and needs less powerful (I have actually powered one via a computer's USB port, which is handy because I was also using it as a USB gadget). You might need a USB hub if you want both a keyboard and mouse, however (or you could connect either a device that acts like both, or a keyboard with a hub (like the official Raspberry Pi keyboard)).

If you don't need wireless, you could even get a plain Raspberry Pi Zero, which is even cheaper and uses even less power. (I actually have one that I use as a microSD reader; search for "rpiboot" and you should find the software needed for that.)