microSD cards don't really cut it for a general-purpose desktop in terms of lifespan and reliability and SSD over USB is an awkward workaround at best. Hopefully the RPi 5 will have NVMe or a SATA port at least.
Agree; from my experience with Pi SD cards, it’s straight-up irresponsible to recommend that anyone use an SD card with the Pi for their main computer.
Every Pi SD card has ended in irreparable disk corruption. The SD hardware’s wear-leveling and delayed allocation is fundamentally incompatible with any device without a battery, especially with frequent writes.
The “official” solution for the Pi is to use read-only SD cards with overlayfs. That’s not the default and it’s not how entry-level users will use this.
I believe a CM4 module could fit in the same space. They were probably developed in parallel, so they couldn't afford to gate the Pi 400 on the CM4 timelines.
Also, don't under estimate the performance of future SD cards.
I know there are other power down issues with SD cards and corruption well. I think in a class setting I would have important files replicated to an NFS server, with at least hourly snapshots.
I’m surprised there isn’t a market solution for long-life (SSD lifespan) SD cards. SD card is just a physical/electrical interface, couldn’t manufacturers put more resilient flash circuitry inside?
