I bought a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ a few weeks ago: this model can self-power USB storage. I don't have an HDMI display, but it was very simple to follow a few tutorials to get it up and running on my network as a (headless) file and media server. It runs the Raspbian port of Plex Media Server very happily, and now my technophobic other half can stream music to his phone. Delightful, and ridiculously good value. I'm almost certainly going to buy another next month.This and this are the tuts you'd need to get it up and running headless if you absolutely don't have an HDMI display to hand. Read the whole thing: if you forget to give the Pi 3's config file a country code, it won't wake up the wireless interface at all. I had a baffling struggle right out the gate, but that turned out to be that the Pi couldn't deal with my Netgear router offering two forms of WPA simultaneously. I turned that off at the router and everything jumped right up.Here's the tut I followed to get Plex installed and set up. Skip the bit about setting a static IP: rather leave the Pi configured to get an address through DHCP, and configure your router with a DHCP reservation for the Pi's wireless interface.

After toying with my Pi3 a bit and then storing it away for many months, I've decided on a small project I'd like to do. This weekend I'll be working on setting up a file/media NOT piracy server (not the most creative project but it'll be useful). To stream media on our TV we've been using a Plex server, via a laptop, but it's kind of annoying with Macbooks as closing the laptop will shut off the server. So this one will be always-on. I picked up a 4 TB hard drive which'll probably be more than I'll ever need, but I think this'll also end up serving as a master backup drive once this is up and running.Got a cool looking little case for it too:These things are so much fun.

I DID end up putting a Raspberry Pi in an arcade cabinet, and liked it enough that I now have two Raspberry Pis in two arcade cabinets. They've had to resort to a bit of a hack to get the Pi to output the correct 15k video signal, but it works and it outputs most old arcade machines' video modes quite beautifully. Crisp picture and perfect sync.That's what I been playing DoDonPachi on, innit. Raspberry Pi is not crap. ARM is not crap. David Braben is not crap. They are fantastic gadgets. Love these little guys.

The new Pi 4 is the first major revision of the Pi, and a massive improvement. However if you are just trying to get something done and don't enjoy tinkering you might want to delay getting it until the community has caught up. There are quite a few issues that need ironing out.

I have mine running as a Retro Pi with around 4000ish NES, SNES, Megadrive etc games on it.