FWIW (and it may not be worth much) I built a new system last year and looked initially at a 4K 32" screen, but found text too small at native resolution. In the end I bought a 27" screen with >100% SRGB for photo editing, and I’m very pleased with it. I also chuckle slightly at these sizes, remembering when I had a 19" CRT on my desk in the early 2000s and would run 2 ‘A4’ pages (1 word, 1 excel) side by size.
This laptop (Dell XPS 9530) has a QHD resolution (3200X1800) but scales text/websites well. It’s almost 8 years old, but still good apart swelling batteries.
We use Lenovo Thinkcentre Tiny M900 on all our TV’s so we can have Sky Go, Virgin Go, Netflix etc and watch films from a usb drive, they are excellent little things, all running Windows 11, with two running dual boot of Win 11 and Linux Lime.
I can’t really justify it either - or at least not the one I bought for use in France.
Chez moi in the UK it is pretty indispensable when working at home - I would have had a twin monitor set up but I couldn’t fit two monitors in the space available.
The problem, as I said, is that once you are used to it anything smaller starts to feel a bit cramped.
I bought a Dell Optiplex 3070 for use in France - i5-9500T, virtually identical in size to the Lenovo “tiny” series and have been pleased with it for general computing use.
Offhand I don’t recall the exact model we have at home - it’s probably an M900, although it has a i5-6600T processor.
Oh, if you do decide to go for an M900, shop around - I chose models available in the EU but they can be had cheaper on eBay if you don’t mind ordering from the UK.
And almost unobtainable at the moment - although the Pi 400 is one of the few items that you might be able to actually buy (CPC has stock in the UK, as does a company called okdo, who I’ve never heard of) and, being built into a keyboard, is perhaps a bit more user-friendly than the bare-pcb versions.
Mind you I have been playing with some Pi 3 B’s - having decided now might be a good time to sell a batch that I acquired a few years ago and never did anything with and it is safe to say that, as a PC replacement, the performance is not stellar (the Pi 4 is better though as they have faster CPUs and much more memory).
I’m almost tempted to pick up a 4GB Pi 4 - there are several improvements over the 3 above & beyond the faster CPU and more RAM including USB 3 and the fact that the Ethernet is connected directly to the CPU, rather than via the USB hub.
However they are like hen’s teeth at the moment - I’m half surprised you found somewhere with the 2GB model in stock (and they seem to be limiting purchases to 1 per customer).
Crikey, that price for a Pi4 is exorbitant, regardless of what it comes with. Fortunately, I have 2 4G Pi4s, one of which I use to control my telescope, mount and both cameras as well as power distribution. I got both for less than the price quoted above.
it was really only intended as an example of what is available - not a purchase suggestion
But, as @billybutcher alluded to earlier in the topic, prices and availability are almost certainly impacted currently on world events.
For the Pi 3’s I’m currently selling I got them at 1/10th the price of that listing.
But they are in very short supply at the moment - the Kitronik link above now shows out of stock (they were in stock yesterday) and the one other place I found with a few left has also now sold out.
As I said above, the M900 Tiny is OK in itself if you want a basic, compact, PC. They date from 2015 and have various specs of Intel 6th generation processor.
I’d be slightly wary of that particular offering - as it doesn’t have a 500GB SSD, it has an SSHD - which uses a small SSD (looks like 8GB) to store frequently used data on a larger (500GB in this case) hard drive. They were briefly in vogue but really have the downsides of both types of device in practice.
Slightly more money on eBay gets you a more recent one with a better processor and a real SSD
No connection to this vendor BTW, purchase at your own risk from eBay (or Cdiscount for that matter).
Or the ebay link I posted earlier in the thread with an M900 with 128GB SSD seems to still have a few left at the moment for 222€
Just a final postscript. I did use the link to buy a mini Lenovo. It took a while to get here I think from Germany. Disappointed there were no manuals, instructions or spec. It came with a separate 256gb solid state drive. So I took out the old drive and put in the new one with no problems. I’m glad it came with a keyboard and mouse as my PS2 converter for my old keyboard doesn’t work. Setting up windows 10 was a little irritating having to refuse so many features I did not need. I stupidly assumed that the keyboard would be querty but of course it is not it is French but as long as I don’t look at the keyboard when typing it works fine. Lastly about a month after receiving the machine I looked at the hard drive I’d taken out and it is identical to the one I put in so I have a spare 256 GB solid state harddrive. Anyway the machine works fine and is just what I need so thanks again for the link
