I love the idea of mini-pcs, but the specs are always dismal.

To me is teems like a single-purpose machine deisgned for web-surfing. People do more than surf and so I see less utility in this that I do in a ChromeBook.

Maybe with 4GB with root access and allowing me to change the distro and operate a lightweight server. Say SABnzbd, or plex media server(but not for transcoding, of course).

I bought a Zonbu when they appeared and ran mine until it died a few years back. It was handy for quick local network admin tasks and ran a few low priority cron jobs. Very cheap to operate, too.