Extreme budget computing

Ignore the hype around the Pi 500, says Jon Honeyball, and enjoy the hypermiling instead.

It’s called hypermiling in the motoring world: squeezing the most distance you possibly can from the minimum amount of fuel. In the computing world, we only used to think about absolute performance. There was never enough, and let’s ignore the power consumption. Today, with the help of Moore’s Law and greater environmental consciousness, we have moved on. Now I want maximum performance with minimal energy use. The crown appears to sit with Apple’s quite extraordinary M4 family of processors, which offers eye-watering performance with power consumption that’s almost laughably low. But that’s on a computer which, when you add in all the “extras” like screen, keyboard and mouse, costs a lot of money. It wins for efficiency after you’ve bought it, but for a computer to claim the hypermiling crown…

You're reading a preview of

APC (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2025

DiscountMags is a licensed distributor (not a publisher) of the above content and Publication through Zinio LLC. Accordingly, we have no editorial control over the Publications. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including those made in Publications offered on our website, are those of the respective author(s) or publisher(s) and not of DiscountMags. DiscountMags does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, truthfulness, or usefulness of all or any portion of any publication or any services or offers made by third parties, nor will we be liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on information contained in any Publication, or your use of services offered, or your acceptance of any offers made through the Service or the Publications. For content removal requests, please contact Zinio.