Views on the raspberry pi

What are your guys views, on the raspberry pi? Tons of kids in my school are like "OMG IT'S LIKE A COMPOOTER YOU CAN PROGRAM YOURSELF LOOK I MADE IT SAY HELLO WORLD IN PYTHON" now don't get me wrong, everyone needs to start somewhere, it's just why with this, what's wrong with just installing linux on your laptop, it's just a slow linux computer. As far as I can tell it's only use is teaching intermediate programmers lower level stuff when they start using the GPIO pins and such.

The RPi is a 100% proprietary smartphone SoC.
What part of it is smartphone-like? There's no wireless: 3G, 4G, wifi, etc.; only the more expensive model has any networking at all and that's Ethernet. There's no touchscreen, or any sort of display included. Other than the fact that it's small form factor, though it wouldn't be after adding all the external components needed for a phone, I don't see it.