Raspberry pi 2 is it worth it?

According to the specs. Raspberry Pi2 is absolutely capable of handling the kind of tasks you are talking about... but I don't have any direct experience with that. Anyway, I used the Raspberry B platfrom (which is mush less performant than Raspberry Pi 2) and I was able to perform simple tasks without any issue...

you have probably decided by now either to try it or not, but if not I will go on record saying "definitely worth it" .. My first PC clone had 512meg of ram and one processor. with 640x480 vga graphics and a 40gig hard drive.. the pi 2 B has 1gig ram and quad processor .. with the 4 usb ports you no longer need a separate hub to support keyboard, mouse, and a 64gig USB micro flash drive.  The big difference is the graphics= HDMI with resolutions up to 1920x1080 you can use most flat panel TVs with a spare port as a monitor. 

Old computer was $1200 back then but a NEW computer w/ monitor can be had for about $300. Compare that to $70 for Pi 2 B CanaKit including wireless, case, power supply and 8gig microsd .. if you have a TV with spare HDMI port (or manually switch plugs) you are up and running.  I chose a cheap $100 Walmart 19" HDMI TV and added a $40 64gig flash drive and still came in under $200 for a pretty decent computer.  On top of how cheap the Pi is, ITS INTENT is to get it in front of young people to encourage this generation of YOUTH to learn about computers and programming.  It was DESIGNED with General Purpose Input/Output pins on the board that YOU can turn on and off with programming to operate external items in the real world.

Get it and dive in

I Am in high school and I have a iPad and I am in need of some kind of computer I can type on a keyboard but I don't want to be out $500 at the same time so I was wondering if it would be worth my while to just buy a raspberry pi 2 and use it for typing essays and researching along with some editing that I would do with my go pro. Is it worth it to me to get this raspberry pi 2?

I would think all except the bold should be good with Raspberry Pi 2. My only hesitation is the go pro because some code/decoding may take a while even with a quad core. Also a lot of storage may be needed to process video. Light editing may be okay.

Clem

Yes, it is worth the $35 or so to have a Raspberry Pi 2 and do with it all that you can with it. However, for what you want to do with it, there are better low cost single board computers. Check out Odroid-C1 for one. At the same price, it has a faster clock speed, Gigabit ethernet, SATA port to connect a hard drive or SSD, and other features. If you have a larger budget, you can look at other boards that are faster and have more ram, etc. The Banana Pi is another to look at. I don't have personal experience with any of these but i have learned that Momma has good advice: 'you better shop around'.

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Yes, you should buy a Pi. Not only can you attach a (USB, or wireless through BT) keyboard to it, you can use the HDMI port to connect to a monitor, either to the monitor's HDMI port or with an adapter to the DVI port. The Pi2 has still USB ports left to attach a mouse (or you use a wireless keyboard/mouse and use a BT dongle). Once provided with a keyboard, monitor and mouse the Pi2 is a full-blown, ARM based, quad-core computer.

You have a choice of various Linux Distros as your OS, but the default Raspbian will fulfill all your needs, even up to a developer environment. It is true that there are more capable boards for around the same amount of money, but none has the user and hardware support the pi has. When you want to shop around (or buy other cheap boards to compare them to the Pi2): try

• the Hardkernel Odroid-C1+ (high-speed quad-core Cortex-A5) ,
• the Banana Pro (dual-core Cortex-A7),
• the Banana Pi M1+ (dual-core Cortex-A7),
• the Banana Pi M2 (quad core Cortex-A7) or
• the soon-to-be-released Banana Pi M3 (octa-core Cortex-A7).