Raspberry Pi Forums

Hello! will the Raspberry PI B+ work directly off a laptop

You can do it by using an Ethernet cable.
http://pihw.wordpress.com/guides/direct ... onnection/

Laurens

In the past I have powered Pis off a notebook's USB port (no devices plugged into the Pi) and used direct ethernet connection to log in from the notebook to the Pi (using SSH).
So it can work, but YMMV

What do you mean?

You CAN NOT plug the HDMI output from a Raspberry Pi into the HDMI output from your laptop.
You CAN (as long as the power budget is low) run a Raspberry Pi from a USB socket (power only not data).
You CAN connect a Raspberry Pi ethernet directly to a laptop ethernet without needing a cross over cable for a point to point link.
You CAN run PuTTY on a laptop and connect to your Raspberry Pi with an ssh session.
You CAN run tightvnc server on your Raspberry Pi and a VNC client on your laptop.

You won't get far with NOOBS without a TV and a mouse (minimum requirement) to click icons and buttons on the installation menu (it is possible to do it without, but that's not easy for a new user).