The Raspberry Pi came officially launched on February 29, 2012. The first model released was the Model B, for $35. I was eager to get my hands on one, and it wasn’t long before I had one to play with. My initial reason for buying one was to use it as a streaming platform, much like the modified X-Box I had running XBMC. The Xbox had a 733 MHz Intel Pentium III 32 bit processor, 64 MB of DDR SDRAM, and an Nvidia GeForce 3-based custom NV2A GPU. It worked fairly, but I wasn’t as thrilled with it as I once was, mainly due to the lack of RAM. The Raspberry Pi Model B had a 700 MHz single-core 32-bit ARM11 CPU, a VideoCore IV GPU, 512 MB RAM (8x as much RAM as the Xbox) and a 26-pin GPIO header, which meant I could do neat things with it other than just use it as a gaming or streaming platform. All-in-all, the Pi worked better for my use case. It had real USB ports, not misshapen ports that made you buy only MS products, or have to buy an adapter. There were only 2 USB ports, but they were more useful. It used an SD card for the OS, which ran much faster than the HDD in the Xbox, had both an HDMI port and analog video out. It used a LOT less power, didn’t generate any heat to speak of, made no noise, and seemed more stable overall.
Flash forward 3 years to 2015, and the Raspberry Pi had evolved into the Raspberry Pi 2, which now had 4 USB ports, a 900 MHz Cortex-A7 CPU, and 1 GB of RAM. It now had a 40 PIN GPIO header instead of only 26 pins, which meant it could control a lot more devices. Now the platform was REALLY starting to take off. More and more projects were being built with the Raspberry Pi platform in mind, and the projects just kept getting better and better.
10 years later in 2025, and we’re now on the Raspberry Pi 5. The RPI 5 has a Broadcom BCM2712, 2.4GHz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, up to 16 GB of LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM, VideoCore VII GPU, Dual 4Kp60 HDMI display outputs with HDR support, Bluetooth 5.0, USB 3.0, and PCIe 2.0 x1. Raspberry Pi has seen that there was demand to use the RPI as a desktop platform, and has tailored the board for that purpose. Granted, if your purpose is to use it as a desktop, you would be better off buying a used computer for that purpose. However, it will now work fairly well as a general purpose desktop.
The allure of the Raspberry Pi platform is its low power consumption, relatively low cost, small footprint, and GPIO header. All of these factors make it useful in situations where even a tiny desktop system just isn’t ideal like digital signage. The GPIO allows you to control other devices as well as accept input from sensors. The fact that its OS and configuration can be changed simply by swapping out an inexpensive Micro SD card is invaluable. The uses for a small, powerful computer are limitless. If you have not yet tried a Raspberry Pi, I advise you pick one up and get started. They are a ton of fun, and once you own one, you will start seeing all the places you could use one in your daily life.