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.

>>19
I think standard machine in this context means the whole machine is 100% equal; it's not enough to have a x86 machine with different Windows systems and hardware. Delivering a programming lesson is difficult enough in itself, teachers don't need the effort needed to troubleshoot the differences in computing environment.