Question Is the Raspberry Pi email promotion legitimate?

[OldSurferDude]

I just received an email extolling the virtues of the Raspberry Pi. Most of us already knew them, but I wanted to inform my fellows here of alternatives. When I clicked on the "View this thread" I got "You do not have permission to view this page or perform this action." This kind of annoyed me because it didn't allow for a free and open discussion on the RPi. The post seems to violate the Official Community Rules:

• Do not post Spam, or use our forums as a tool to promote your own personal products or services. Trying to drive our readers to third party sites will result in such posts being edited or deleted and associated accounts will be banned.

and

• Spam posts will result in an immediate permanent ban.

Don't get me wrong, I like the RPi! the only thing I don't currently like is the price. Once one gets everything one needs, heat sinks, fan, power supply, case, keyboard, mouse, sd card, it's around US$100! My first RPi, with all of that, was US$35. Then you'll have to have a monitor.

One can buy a used/refurbished desktop or laptop for less. The downside is no I/O; this is resolved with a $3 Arduino Nano and USB cable. The monitor could be optional

Another alternative is the Orange Pi. This little ugly is not for the faint of heart. The support is terrible and the libraries are iffy. I use mine for an MQTT broker and it does quite well. It only pulls about 300mA, and runs just fine without heat sinks. I am also using one to monitor the data for my heat pump which is powered by a USD$1.62 power supply (which requires a "death cord" ) Yeah, it needs a case.

So OK, extol the virtues, but not without community discussion.

 

[RealBeast]

That linked to a spam post that was removed by a moderator. I don't see that rules were broken by you clicking on a banned post but will check with the other moderators.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

This is the generic reply when you click a link to a thread or message that has been removed from public view for SPAM. The exact message is keyed off of the field denoting the reason it was deleted. Just delete the notification and proceed with your day.