The Pi isn't great value, but honestly, I'm finding it hard to find a better trade-off between price, performance and software support right now than the compute modules for embedded projects where you can afford to spin a custom PCB. Especially for low-ish volume or prototype stuff.

I also love the compute modules for their size. Stick one on a nano base board and they’re half the size of a Pi 5. TBH the standard Pis are a bit frustrating with all of the IO. I do not believe the average purchaser is using one as a PC replacement and wants 4 USB ports and 2 HDMI ports. I’ve never seen one in use like that. They are mostly servers or driving a single display without any user input.

100% with you on the IO. I've never even wanted two display output ports with any raspberry pi.

You know what I do want though? An actual damn HDMI port! HDMI cables are everywhere, wherever I am I have unlimited options to connect an HDMI device to some kind of screen. But micro HDMI? The literal only thing in my life that uses it is the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5. There have been plenty of times where I've reached for a Pi 3b instead of a 4 or 5 just because I didn't have a micro HDMI cable.

I do not understand what has gone through their head. How could anyone look at the use case for a Raspberry Pi and decide that two micro HDMI ports is a better choice than one HDMI port? I don't understand it. Like you, my experience with the Pi is that they mostly just sit there, headless, so the only reason I need display output is that it's useful during setup (because they don't have a proper serial console port).

I can't set up a Pi 4 or 5 without going hunting for that micro HDMI cable I bought specifically for that purpose and never use for anything else. I can set up a Pi 3b anywhere, at any time.

The micro hdmi thing (which I too loath) is for digital signage and industrial machinery - we (home users) aren't the audience and haven't been for a long time.

Being able to run two sides of an advertising board, or two control panel screens on a big hunk of metal doing fabrication things in a factory was more important to Raspberry Pi as a business apparently.

Why he heck they didn't just go with 1x normal hdmi and 1x usb-c +DP for the Pi 5 is a mystery, perhaps the SOC doesn't support it or something.

Don't forget the case and fan. I think the RPi 3 was the last one you could comfortably run without a fan and not worry about it frying the SD card

Completely depends on what you're doing. If you're doing a lot of sustained compute, or doing graphics, then yeah you're gonna want some cooling. But it's a useful little machine for all kinds of tasks which don't cause sustained high power consumption.

Two fried on me. One was just running a printserver without a case. It was in summer so ambient temperature was around 32C but still, you telling me you use rpi 5 without even a cooling case?

I've had an rPi4 running a copy of a forum and server (for reference) in one of the fancy aluminum cases which passively cools for a couple of years now, no issues.

The big chunky aluminum ones do seem pretty good on the pi 4. I had one in the flirc case for a long time and it never seemed to have issues. Obviously adds to the cost though. Also not sure if the Pi 5 works as well in them given its higher thermals, and the Pi 4 didn't exactly run cool so imagine the 5 might throttle occasionally without active cooling.

Yeah I should have been more specific, a fan isn't the only option but you need either a fan or a cooling case. Running them naked is too risky now

I have been using a Pi 4 as a desktop computer for a few years (didn't have anything else) with an microSD card and without any fan, heatsink or case. Haven't had anything problems. Obviously, this depends on your environment, but it worked fine for me.