Was just wondering how the Pi3 works for general computing (aka as a desktop). And if emulators work in OS's available for the Pi like Ubuntu Mate (Obviously they work well in retropi but that's not something someone can browse the web and doing basic productivity like word processing on)
Reason being I was thinking of giving/recommending a Pi 3 to someone I know who is stuck on an ancient Core 2 Duo Windows Vista Desktop (they can't really afford a new desktop) on the possibility it could probably outperform the thing and give them a slightly better computing experience.
#1 A Core 2 Duo will smoke a Pi 3 in raw power. A Pi 3 is basically an outdated smartphone chip. A Pi 3 offhand has about oomph as the original Core Duo, maybe.
#2 Teaching people to use Linux is gonna be awfully hard. I know I heard people saying that they converted friends/family to Linux to save on tech support hours, but I'm very skeptical of the success rate of such an endeavor.
If you need a budget PC for someone to replace a laptop you can find older core i3 small form factor systems for like $100 with Windows license included. Something like this (deal from last year, OOS now):
https://slickdeals.net/f/10571472-l...d-109-99-fs?src=SiteSearchV2_SearchBarV2Algo1
I run a little box like this for my Plex server. I bought an M71e with a Pentium G630 in it for $99 in 2015.
Honestly if they already have a Core 2 Duo laptop, a cheap SSD upgrade and a RAM bump, along with a Win7 upgrade, would probably speed the thing up immensely. Core 2 chips normally still run Windows pretty well if you're not trying to do gaming or 4k or anything fancy.