COULD THIS £100 PI RUN YOUR OFFICE?

Barry Collins spends a week working on a Raspberry Pi... and rather likes it

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The problem with being PC Pro's features editor is you sometimes have to follow through on your own stupid ideas. So when, during a features meeting a few months ago, I idly speculated whether you could actually work full-time from a Raspberry Pi, editor Tim immediately gave it the thumbs up and slotted it into the schedule.

Consequently, I've just spent a week doing as much work as possible from a computer that cost less than the backup SSD connected to my Mac. You'll notice that “as much work as possible” caveat, because there are some jobs in my day-to-day existence - shuffling round magazine pages in InDesign and editing podcasts in Audition to name but two - that the Pi simply can't cope with. Not only in terms of raw power but also lack of access to the necessary software.

However, these are not everyday office tasks. Many workers these days spend 90% of their time in a web browser, or dealing with email, on video calls, or collaborating with colleagues in apps such as Teams or Slack. So could a Raspberry Pi that's perfectly capable of accessing all these services really be a passable office system? There was only way to find out.

The all-in-one approach

The Pi I selected for this daft little experiment was the Raspberry Pi 500 basically a Raspberry Pi 5 wrapped in a keyboard enclosure, similar to the Commodore 64 of yore, albeit considerably slimmer. And without the power brick that gave bricks a bad name.

That's not to say the Raspberry Pi 500's own power supply is without its problems. The Raspberry Pi 500 doesn't come with a power supply, so I ordered the official 27W offering along with a micro-HDMI cable (a man can never have enough HDMI cables) from the Pi Hut, bringing the total cost of the hardware to £107.50 inc VAT.