@chrnobel
You can in no way compare the product from Olimex with Banana Pi
How's that : same processor+memory size+clocking+power management chip etc..., also open source schematic. (Note that my Banana required some butchery to fix a soft ? /design problem in the 5v supply - burned L9/D5 - boost converter to USB block).
Apart from that, if to play again, I would favour the top notch Olimex A20 board, it has a 4GB on board NAND flash that frees the SD card slot, probably faster DDR3 memory, separate jack for power supply (useful because 3-4 Amps a good idea with a SATA drive and lots of USB peripherals), probably faster USB and hopefully a better Debian version.
What those 2 single board computers have in common is that they wont require cooling compared to the higher clocked ARM's.
Though not a fan of Linux, I can say that, apart from the BURNED COMPONENTS, I was able, after a lot of efforts, to build and run both FPC 2.7.1 and Lazarus 1.3 ON the Banana. What counts here is the 1GB RAM, because at link time, memory usage does up to 660MB.
Added : old stuff I had around, HDMI to VGA converter, VGA screen, USB+ WIFI +Cordless keyboard & mouse and you get something that resembles a real computer.
Really not as convenient as my desktop machine but still near usable.