How to Use a Raspberry Pi 4 as a Cheap PC

5 Tips from the field.

You can probably have too many computers. I have a big desktop machine. And a laptop. Plus several connected to TVs and 3D printers. I recently set up a new shop in the backyard and I was tired of dragging the laptop out there to work and then dragging it back in. I didn’t want to spend a lot to put something out there partly for economics and partly because it is a shed and not terribly secure. So I thought of a Raspberry Pi.

You are undoubtedly aware of the Raspberry Pi. Little boards that run Linux and don’t cost very much. However, they also haven’t quite been what most people expect out of a working PC. That is until recently. The Raspberry Pi 4 is not available and while the basic models still fall short of a good desktop computer, you can now get models with 4G and even 8G of memory and still spend less than $100.

So I set one up and after a little trial and error, I’m pretty happy with it. But I did learn a few things that I’ll share with you.

1. You really want at least a 64GB Class 10 SDCard

The Pi uses the SDCard as its hard drive so this isn’t the place to cheap out. Class 10 is faster than the cheaper ones, and a 64 GB card isn’t very expensive anymore. UHS1 and UHS3 cards should also work…