Lenovo Announces a $130 Windows PC in a Stick
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Also, that was one of the lowest-content and worst-thought-out TechCrunch writeups I've seen ("If you’ve ever wanted to plug a Windows machine into your TV for a little hot and heavy Excel slinging, you’re in luck"... really? I've done so with Laptops for the last decade).
And they even acknowledge "These single-stick computers are nothing new " (heck, we've got some Intel Compute Sticks at my work). I guess it's not fun having to write up these things.
That's why Chinese no-brand maker have been making those since the Intel Baytrail was released:
http://www.geekbuying.com/category/Windows-Mini-PCs-1655/
It's nice to see a device from a well-known brand that stays close to the anonymous Chinese manufacturers, but at the end of the day the innovation that makes it possible comes from the chip makers.
I wonder when we can have that level of power and convenience in our regular phones.
If you're one of the lucky few with an Ubuntu phone, you can do this as well.
True, but it depends on what you want to do with it. I can run Linux on an Intel Edison board (did some Python and C++ programming on one last weekend), but I wouldn't dare to try to write code on anything heavier than vim.
Reference: http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8560195/microsoft-continuum...
If someone came out with a stick computer that simply connects to wifi and displays a webpage in a relatively modern browser at 1080 (or at least 720) and makes it easy, I would buy several of them at a nice premium over whatever the hardware normally costs.
I actually think an Android hacker or RaspberryPI hobbyist could make some money selling something like that.
What did you find painful about using it? Looks like it supports custom ROMs, did you try using something like CyanogenMod (or the Finless ROM mentioned in the linked article)?
Regardless, I would gladly pay twice as much for the device if it came already set up. I am very pro-hobbyist, but in this case I want a fully formed product.
So something as simple as a Raspberry Pi B+ ($25), an OmniVESA (approx $7), a USB WiFi dongle (approx $9), a 4GB MicroSDHC card (approx $6), a micro USB charger (approx $4) and a short HDMI cable (approx $7). Total cost $58. Could add a cheap case if you wanted. Perhaps there are ways to do all this cheaper with an Android mini PC, but a RasPi setup would be very flexible, and wouldn't require too much setup. It's also easy to boot straight into a web browser (can find some distro recommendations here https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=8502...).
http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/RASPBERRY-PI-83-16317-...
http://shop.pimoroni.com/products/omnivesa
http://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-WIFI-Adapter-Dongle/dp/B0...
http://www.amazon.com/Sandisk-MicroSDHC-Memory-Adapter-Packa...
http://www.amazon.com/BlackBerry-Folding-Blade-Micro-USB-Cha...
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Cable-Store-Foot-Plated/dp/B00474...
Even though you're ideally looking for an off the shelf solution, hope these suggestions are of some use.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=compulab-...
The CPU on this one is the same as on the Intel Compute Stick, a Z3735F.
I'll update this if I find anything.
But thanks.
Now only if someone were providing hosting for them ...
Maybe Raspberry Hosting[0] would be interested ;)
That was my point, by the way. Dedicated micro servers could be priced like VPS, but be more secure.
Keep in mind you can buy a much more powerful machine than this from Amazon or Microsoft for around $10 all in (yes, running Windows). So they'd have to be looking around $5 and IPv4 addresses can cost $1.5-2/each.
"5V, 2A wall-mount AC-DC power adapter"
So I need to have cables trailing around. They don't show that in the pretty pictures do they? :/
The CPU is fast enough for moderate web browsing, using Office, playing videos and music, etc. In other words, the casual tasks of an "average user". Of course, it wasn't made to compile software or run complex simulations, and it has some thermal throttling (my tablet has no fans and this stick doesn't appear to have any, either), so if you use the four cores to the maximum for some time, the speed will start decreasing from 1.56 GHz (I have made the max go as low as 0.96 GHz due to throttling). This is the kind of thing that doesn't show in all benchmarks, so beware. (To be fair, spec sheets also don't say that when cores are not fully used, turboboost kicks in and a single core can be working at 1.8 GHz for quite some time).
The integrated Intel graphics are (as usual) good for media playing, web browsing and dealing with Windows UI animations, but forget any kind of gaming that demands more than a smartphone game.
The biggest problem, for me at least, is the lack of RAM: 2 GB of RAM are filled quite fast with 6-8 Chrome tabs and some background software open. It also doesn't take much to fill the whole 4 GB of commit space, and of course, bringing pages in and out of the pagefile is quite slow (the storage is flash, but not quite a SSD). It is easy to make Windows show a "system running low on memory" message just by opening 20 Chrome tabs, some with heavy sites. If all you want to do is run Microsoft Office, I found it to actually be much lighter on memory use than I previously thought (I never saw OneNote, Excel or Word go beyond 90 MB).
Storage gets quite full very easily, mine is always with ~1 GB free (Windows and Office installed on C:, most other things installed on the SD card), and this is using things like NTFS compression. If this stick is like my tablet, it will have 6 GB of storage "wasted" on a recovery partition. Also, the trick Microsoft recommends OEMs use for fitting Windows on systems with as few as 16 GB of storage, which consists on using WIM images for storing the system files, works only while the install is fresh: as more and more system updates are installed, the altered files seem to be stored out of the image, which means there's effectively more space used with Windows files than with a normal install. I have "reserved" the Windows 10 update and I'm eager to see how it will deal with background-downloading the (possibly gigabytes) of files into a system with only 1 GB free.
I once thought of installing Visual Studio just to see how slow it would run, but gave up once I understood most components must be installed to C: (it appears that installing VS effectively equates to "extending Windows" with developer tools).
I am still quite happy with the purchase (it was about $150) since it allows for doing things Android tablets don't do, like running the full MS Office or using proper desktop versions of browsers and other software. I imagine this stick opens the same kind of possibilities.
Having just a Chromecast sucks because you need a whole other smart device to actually do things. The Roku is a little better, but honestly it's too slow to navigate.
With Windows, I can do whatever the heck I want. We can play classic game emulators with Xbox controllers, watch ripped exercise DVDs with VLC media player (my wife does this), we run Netflix for Windows or Kodi to watch movies/TV and then of course we can do anything that a Chromecast does by simply opening Chrome (with adblock). It's awesome.
For me, a Chromecast is very close to the perfect device, as my iPad lives in the living room most of the time and allows me to conveniently control the Chromecast, without any keyboards or mice lying around. While it's not as powerful or flexible as your setup, I prefer its convenience. It does everything I need it to (Netflix, Youtube, other players [ZDF Mediathek etc], play local files with Plex or Videostream for Chrome, ...), and does so hassle-free. For surfing, I prefer the iPad over the TV anyway.
For me, the 2.4 GHz spectrum is only usable during "off-peak" hours, or extremely close to the router (the Chromecast is <1m from the router, so it's fine). But since I use 5 GHz for everything else, I muddle through with surprisingly few issues :)
I don't think there is more inherent convenience in the iPad -> Chromecast setup. My $20 wireless keyboard is actually more convenient in my opinion because it's a dedicated input control that's ready to go as soon as I pick it up. With a smart device, I have to setup a whole other device with apps that are compatible with Chromecast and when we're picking stuff to watch we don't have to huddle around a tablet or phone - we just look at what's on the TV.
Can you look at funny memepics on the web while Pandora is playing in the background on Apple TV? Shop for a new game on Steam while playing a YouTube video? Connect an Xbox 360 controller to play games? We do all of these things. I haven't used an Apple TV, but somehow I doubt that it excels at multi-tasking or interoperating with the non-Apple universe.
> dumbed-down products
> streamlined but extremely limited
What the hell are you even talking about here? It's certainly not TV sticks because all of them offer similar functionality. It's certainly not Apple laptops or desktops and their unix backed OSX. What then? Phones? What activities do you do on your phone that cannot be done on an iPhone? In what tangible way is an iPhone dumbed-down and extremely limited compared to, what, Android? And most importantly, in what way does using an iPhone irreversibly force you into the Apple ecosystem?
All of Apple's products are dumbed down compared to competing products. Windows has soooo much more flexibility than OS X and I'll be glad to give you a couple of good examples to shore up my argument.
For starters - the really big obvious one is that OS X only runs on a very small sub-set of the hardware that Windows runs on. I don't care if their business plan dictates it, it's dumb and I won't use OS X because of it. Windows runs faster on the same hardware anyway.
Here's a big one for which there are lots of examples - Apple simply does not let you customize OS X nearly as much as you can customize Windows. Apple's dumb-it-down attitude reaches all the way to the smallest of features - for instance, go try and change the color of your mouse cursor in OS X. One day I tried to change it to white because I like that better and I found out that OS X has the cursor bitmap burned into a fucking ROM or something... that's just a tad ridiculous, don't you think?
I think it's hilarious that some people are so in love with Apple that they don't even see the most basic examples. If the mouse cursor example hasn't convinced you please let me know and I'll come back with a larger list of just how many ways OS X is limited (and therefore dumbed-down) compared to Windows and Linux desktops.
(EDIT: And the same arguments go for the iPhone versus others. Apple doesn't let you customize it nearly as much as Android and of course they don't let you run it on the hardware you want, so yeah the iPhone is dumbed-down. Enjoy your prison yard!)
> Here's a big one for which there are lots of examples - Apple simply does not let you customize OS X nearly as much as you can customize Windows. Apple's dumb-it-down attitude reaches all the way to the smallest of features - for instance, go try and change the color of your mouse cursor in OS X.
You escalate the notion of a mouse cursor theme being difficult to change into the entire operating system being difficult to customize. An operating system does a lot of stuff, I don't see how any of this follows.
> I think it's hilarious that some people are so in love with Apple that they don't even see the most basic examples.
I'm not sure what you think this tiny thing is indicative of, but I guarantee to you that most people have never even thought about this because it is irrelevant to their lives.
> And the same arguments go for the iPhone versus others. Apple doesn't let you customize it nearly as much as Android and of course they don't let you run it on the hardware you want, so yeah the iPhone is dumbed-down. Enjoy your prison yard!
To summarize your arguments: Apple provides fewer hardware options and a lot less theming options. Seems to me like your words are a bit too harsh considering you are describing a full desktop operating system and a full mobile operating system, both of which have significantly more knobs to tweak than just themes. They also run software you know. Limiting access to fiddle with themes is hardly a prison yard. Also, not everybody has the time to fiddle with themes. Also, just because something is customizable doesn't mean you can make it look good (customizability comes at a cost to coherency). Also, plenty of people use Apple strictly because of how their products look and feel. I think your theming metric is quite weak in general, but especially when used to back up the claims that every single thing Apple makes is "dumbed down" and "extremely limited."
Being able to change the color of the cursor is not a "theming" option, it's a usability option because I can see the white cursor and find it on the screen much better than the black one. It's just one example though.
I'll go through every piece of software that comes with OS X and show you a better default application that comes with Windows if you want. Let's start with the basics - Finder - which is super limited compared to other file browsers.
- Just added the ability to cut and paste in Lion/2011!
- No hooks to extend it the way you can Windows Explorer. (So, you simply cannot have a whole class of software, like TortoiseGit.)
- No address bar to quickly see and/or enter a path. You can get close with the status bar thingy, but it's still limited in ways that matter - namely, having an obvious place to enter a path...
- Cannot remove it from the Dock because reasons. (I don't care about the reasons, you simply cannot do it.)
> Limited options is exactly what "dumbed down" means and Apple is known for offering dumbed down limited devices and computers.
> .. the fact that you can only run OS X on one single brand of hardware is a major limitation.
What are you trying to pull here? You know that's not what "exactly" means. You painted a very vivid picture with your earlier words and you know god damn well that it wasn't: "Apple has a limited hardware selection." No, you claimed that all of their products are "extremely limited" and "dumbed down." Meanwhile half of your argument relies on the fact that just the selection process simplified. That's like calling Mazda products dumbed down because they only sell a handful of cars. Its an absurd metric, its absurd for it to be a large part of why you bad-mouth the entirety of their products, and it is absurd to imply that bad-mouthing the entirety of their products in a vacuum exactly implies that the selection process is limited. And by the way limiting the hardware selection only to the high-end and providing a tighter integration the software is a major reason why Apple is the company it is today. That means regardless of how strongly you feel about this you have to concede that you are being subjective. So what you've got here is a subjective opinion about just the selection process being leveraged into calling all products dumbed-down. Its just ridiculous.
> Being able to change the color of the cursor is not a "theming" option, it's a usability option because I can see the white cursor and find it on the screen much better than the black one. It's just one example though.
A large part of my objective was how you were heavily implying that this one example strongly supports your grandiose claims.
I am not familiar with accessibility options on Macs historically but on my work Mac there is an option to increase cursor size, and it can be made quite big. Also, it's black precisely for visibility. The OSX themes have always been bright and the vast majority of web pages and apps are bright so a black cursor offers contrast. Doesn't Windows offer a black cursor as a means to increase visibility?
> - Just added the ability to cut and paste in Lion/2011!
Note how you're not complaining about the underlying functionality but only about the UX differences. This is a complaint that OSX is not Windows and its four years old.
> - No hooks to extend it the way you can Windows Explorer. (So, you simply cannot have a whole class of software, like TortoiseGit.)
I'm not familiar with this so I can't comment about specifics. Though this does seem like a very niche use case, the lack of which does not warrant calling the entire operating system "extremely simplified" and "dumbed down."
Why not just use git? Oh, right, dos. That's why I develop on macs.
> - No address bar to quickly see and/or enter a path. You can get close with the status bar thingy, but it's still limited in ways that matter - namely, having an obvious place to enter a path...
From the menu: Go > Go to Folder ... or Command + Shift + G. Functionality is there, it could be easier to access, its a trade-off. Though the vast majority of the time that I go to specific code paths I'm in bash.
> - Cannot remove it from the Dock because reasons. (I don't care about the reasons, you simply cannot do it.)
Hiding Finder is the equivalent of hiding the start menu on Windows. I have no idea how to do either, I'm not sure why anybody would want to, and I don't see a logical relation between this and calling the operating system "dumbed down".