Eh, raspberry pi 4 comes w/ 8 gigs now and is $75, provided you have no specific software compatibility reason for needing an intel processor the ARM one will vastly exceed your expectations and run any light linux install like lightning fast butter. Also even a rpi2 w/ only a single gig of ram can emulate the entire ps1 catalog easily as well as 30 some other systems as the ps1 chip evolved from the same architectureand previous systems have drastically lower workloads. If you just want a sbc to emulate and stream the rpi4 can do both w/ processing power and ram to spare all from a class 10 sd card/flashdrive/any usb disk drive. The rpi4 is it's own fully capable desktop these days for the average user capable of installing linux. 3.370079in x 2.224409 (little bit bigger than a credit card) is a size bargain w/ the additional features including
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B specs
System-on-a-chip: Broadcom BCM2711
Processor: Quad-core 1.5GHz Arm Cortex-A72 based processor
Memory: 1/2/4/and recently released 8GB LPDDR4 RAM
Connectivity: 802.11ac Wi-Fi / Bluetooth 5.0, Gigabit Ethernet
Video and sound: 2 x micro-HDMI ports supporting 4K@60Hz displays via HDMI 2.0, MIPI DSI display port, MIPI CSI camera port, 4 pole stereo output and composite video port
Ports: 2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0
Power: 5V/3A via USB-C, 5V via GPIO header
Expandability: 40-pin GPIO header
Now bear in mind... it's popularity has created an insane variety of add on "hat" boards that increase it's functionality w/ only a minor increase in it's physical footprint as they stack.
In short... it's a better value all around. If you're a 3rd world person studying software development then a $50(starting at will get you 4gb ram, $100 will get you 8gb) intel equipped used chromebook can be had on newegg most the time as they sell refurbished school models that will run linux like a champ w/ decent ram to boot.
It's just the wrong product at a terrible price point while being terribly niche imho.
The Pi and this are targeting different markets. The NUC runs an actual version of Win10, so it's looking at the market where a micro-nettop could be useful.
The Pi targets a different market, but the 4 seems to have lost it's way. The newest ones run so hot it's not funny, you need air cooling to keep them going properly, and the lack of any kind of real storage is a super hindrance. Yeah, I can run owncloud on the new 4, but your bottleneck is always going to be that terrible storage channel.
using a proprietary OS on an SBC is kinda retarded for most practical purposes. The lions share of it's thermal problems were fixed w/ software updates. Any decent 5v fan above a couple finned aluminum heat sinks and you'll never thermal throttle. Any lightweight linux stall is snappy as hell through an sd or usb3 port. Booting linux on a flash drive for troubleshooting has been done since the usb standard first came out.
Win10 x86 and Win10 ARM are really two different animals. You can emulate x86 on ARM, but it's slower than frozen snot from a dead felon buried in the arctic circle. While the end-user interface is the same now, you're still not going to take your favorite x86 program and load it on this thing without some serious perfomance hits, assuming the CPU can emulate it properly at all. It's more akin to XBOX and Playstation. They may have some of the same games and use the same assets, but the code running stuff is complied for a different CPU.
They say the thermal problems have been fixed, but I still see them, even with a full aluminum heatsink enclosure. You get this thing up to 100% and it will throttle if there's no air movement. As far as booting from USB, yeah, I actually boot all my 2s via NFS. There's no problem doing that, but you still have the issue where everything is running through bottlenecked channels to get to storage. The Pi really needs a native SATA port or two to be really useful. That's the biggest thing, no real storage.
edit: This is really, in my opinion, more about Microsoft offering damage control because the Pi was a serious threat to Windows dominance - a cheap and easy, well supported way of getting Linux into the common man's hands. There's really no need to use Windows on a Pi, Rasbian is a fully developed and supported Debian build that offers everything you really need for a computer of this nature.
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