Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/04/adafruit-to-offer-the-raspberry-pi-400-in-the-us.html
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She’s great, and the Pi 400 looks very cool, but one minor point: the Apple //e didn’t have built in disk drives.
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Looks great although I do wonder about cooling it as the Pi4 does have issues with overheating and I don’t know how you would cool it down when it’s encased in that keyboard…
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They built in a huge heatsink. It’s discussed in the other RasPi 400 thread.
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If one loaded something such as kodi on this thing would it (with an HDMI output) make a decent portable media server? (like for an itinerant giver of lectures with videos?) was thinking of getting a Raspberry Pi 4 for that, but then i’d need a keyboard and…
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I was thinking along similar lines to justify buying one to myself. You’d need an HDMI adapter but the version with peripherals comes with one. The only inconvenience is that it doesn’t have a built-in touchpad, so you will always have to use a mouse, which might be inconvenient on a lectern.
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Technically it’s doable as Kodi already runs nicely on the Raspberries, but then a laptop would likely be a better option for having more storage space, enclosed battery, its own screen and a lot more computing power etc. Also, having a keyboard with many cables hanging from the rear doesn’t make it the best solution as a media player; a RPi4 with external bluetooth keyboard and/or remote would be a lot less cumbersome to use. I see this device more as a teaching platform for kids, that is, something that looks like a computer without being so intimidating, and if it breaks it’s just $70.
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The RPi4 runs Kodi fine, but it has issues with a lot of other media programs (Spotify, Netflix, basically anything that’s a webpage that relies on the Widevine browser extension), and Kodi extensions based on the aforementioned programs.
If you’re only looking at vanilla Kodi then it’s certainly doable, but I second stinkyfoot’s suggestion of just using a standard RPi4 or laptop instead.
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Thankee folks! i’ll not be going with a RPi-400 for this need at least - on your sound advice.
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Ahh good to know! Thanks for letting us know.
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If only they would do something about those god awful case colors
It’s also listed on the Microcenter web site as available from 11/6 in store.
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Good old Microcenter. They’re usually very good about keeping Pi stuff in stock. I wonder if they’ll do what they do with the Pi Zero series: a quantity penalty rather than a quantity discount. Good for keeping the flippers at bay.
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I loved the sale they ran on the 0 for several weeks: first one, $.99; second one, $5, rest $10 I believe…
I really like how it keeps them in the hands of people who want to play with them and use them for household experiments! 
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