On the fashion wheel, we've circled back to thin clients. At least that's the trend I notice.[0]

And I'm not against it. A cheap, small, arm laptop that can last multiple hours of use and all the work is done on remote beefy hardware.

[0] See JetBrains Fleet/Gateway, talks by Netflix at strangeloop implementing this pattern for their video editors (I think), GitHub codespaces, etc.

I use an old Chromebook, running Linux, in much this way. For it's compact form factor, and the small amount I acquired it for originally, it's been a great value.

> A Pi is bought for tinkering

Not always. Many of use it to run actual workflows too. It actually makes for a decent home server.

The engineers at my old company utilized many of them to runs tests against hardware. Hobbyists don't realize that they can indeed have business uses.

My point is, a home server is not a main computer. I have several Pi's but never used one as my main computer.

I still have the dream that I can use a Pi as my main desktop and main laptop. I still need more CPU/GPU power and more connections, so the dream is not here yet. It will come some day. My main desktop now is an AMD A8 from 2015, which suits me just fine. My laptop has a Celeron from 2015, which is too weak for me. I would desire to have something like that AMD A8, but smaller, cheaper and lower power consumption. It will get there.

I've never used a laptop as my main computer. That doesn't mean other people can't do it.

I used my Pi 400 as my daily driver for about 6 months. I loved it... until they released the new version of Raspberry Pi OS that has some issues for me.

And now that the COVID restrictions have lifted for the most part, I wish I could bring it with me to work from coffee shops.

The 4th generation Pis are plenty capable. Biggest problem I have is the wireless drivers seem to have suffered from serious regressions over the past couple of years across all models of Pi.

It used to be I could install hostapd and have a perfectly stable and capable (if somewhat short range) access point. Then something happened to the driver and now the APs tend to crash and lock up the wireless regularly.