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.

>>44
What threat could the Raspi possibly pose without network access?

>>43
Sometimes free isn't cheap. It's not necessarily cheaper to ship school loads of 5kg computer systems around countries rather than 50g computer on a board.

>Easy to modify? An SBC where everything is soldered together, compared to a standard desktop PC?
Modify in this case doesn't mean attaching more RAM or soldering in a co-processor chip. It means hacking the system to form a different device like these http://hackaday.com/category/raspberry-pi-2/
Most PC systems use the ATX form factor for the motherboard which means it's hard to use it in the same manner.