Reddit reviews ASUS SBC Tinker board RK3288 SoC 1.8GHz Quad Core CPU, 600MHz Mali-T764 GPU, 2GB

https://smile.amazon.com/ASUS-Tinker-board-2GB-Motherboard/dp/B06VSBVQWS

But you know what is? A Tinkerboard.

Very interesting. Amazon.com seems to have them:

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Tinker-board-2GB-Motherboard/dp/B06VSBVQWS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487536280&sr=8-1&keywords=tinker+board+computer

I am aware that they share the bus and the question asked about gigbit internet but i added what i said in response to you about setting up a cheap VPN service since there are multiple ways of doing it.

EDIT: Alternative to the raspberry would be ASUS SBC Tinker board since it does have a non-shared usb/ethernet bus.

This is what I get for rock64

Here you go!!

ASUS SBC Tinker board RK3288 SoC 1.8GHz Quad Core CPU, 600MHz Mali-T764 GPU, 2GB https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06VSBVQWS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Wey-yb8GR4N09

For Computer Science I'd say math - hands down, without question.

But for IT, the answer is more complicated. There is no single academic subject that benefits the study of IT the most.
Some IT degrees might require calculus. I'm not sure why really, but mathematical logic does have benefits, I suppose.

But what you need to cultivate is a diagnostic or investigative mental approach to everything. Critical thinking is a difficult subject to teach. Debate Team might be a great environment to develop these skills. A Science Club, where you at least occasionally leverage the scientific process as part of a discussion could also be good. Electronics where you have to diagnose why something doesn't work could be equally good.

One of the reasons why so many IT professionals come across as grumpy and negative is we spend so much time searching for negatives. "How can this thing fail?" "If this thing breaks, what results or outcomes can we expect?"

We do that mental exercise over and over and over. And it bleeds out of our work-lives and into our social-lives sometimes.

More important that academics or formal extra-curriculars though: You need to start tinkering NOW.

Download a LiveCD or Bootable USB image of Ubuntu or Fedora or CentOS and start tinkering.
Buy a Raspberry Pi kit or one of those new Asus TinkerBoards and start poking at Linux and all the things it can do.

Explore the world of technology beyond Windows -- those efforts might pay off best of all.

A dedicated computer that you can experiment on, and not impact your ability to do homework might be the single best investment you can make in yourself at this phase of your life.

It doesn't have to be magnificent. It just has to be dedicated to experimentation.

Refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad T430 @ $185

I know, compared to a sexy MacBook Pro, Microsoft SurfaceBook or Samsung ChromeBook, that ThinkPad looks ugly and crude and clunky. But spare parts for ThinkPads are easy to find, and the support manual for how to take it apart is publicly available. And that hardware will run windows or Linux like a champ with no strange driver issues to deal with. There is great beauty in its simplicity.

You got me interested. Here is what i was able to find.

Tinker Board by Asus offers 4k and available on Amazon for $59.

https://www.amazon.com/Tinker-board-RK3288-1-8GHz-Mali-T764/dp/B06VSBVQWS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492744107&sr=8-1&keywords=tinker+board

I have no experience on any other board than the Raspberry Pi series, but these ones tend to come up in discussions about RasPi alternatives:

• Beaglebone Black
  
• Asus Tinkerboard
  
• Odroid-XU4
  
• Orange Pi
  
• Banana Pi