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Lenovo Announces a $130 Windows PC in a Stick
- ZenoArrow 11y agoIs this just a rebranded Intel Compute Stick? http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-stick/intel-compute-stick.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-stick/intel-c...
- ddebruler 11y agoIt has the same processor, memory, and peripherals mentioned in the compute stick announcement, so it appears to be the Compute Stick with whatever exterior decorations and software Lenovo wants to add. I think we can expect to see a few more similar announcements as various other OEMs continue to rebrand the same device.
- GFischer 11y agoIt has the same processor and specs. 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.
- mariusmg 11y agoReally? You don't appreciate the effort of coming up with the phrase "hot and heavy slinging" in a article about TV dongles ? :)
- artmageddon 11y agoEspecially when it's used in conjunction with "Excel"...
- beefsack 11y agoIt appears Intel might be white-labelling it.
- thefreeman 11y agoDon't be hasty! Lenovo probably "upgraded" it with performance improvements like failing to validate SSL certificates.
- morganvachon 11y agoCame here to say this. No thanks, Lenovo, I can get the same performance and form factor directly from Intel with no "added value" spyware, and I can even get it with Linux preinstalled if I want.
- robogimp 11y agoAlso lenovo general build quality is pretty crappy. Source: I own one and wish I didn't.
- morganvachon 11y agoTheir business line is decent, I had a ThinkCentre machine a while back that was rock solid. Their consumer line is not nearly as polished, and with the spyware stuff from last year I now won't even touch their business hardware, which arguably wasn't affected. I moved our company from Lenovo to Dell and HP for any new workstations, specifically because of the loss of trust. It's not even about the possibility of an infection as I always re-image any new machine we get immediately, it's more about the principle, and my boss agreed.
- eloisant 11y agoBasically to make a computer that small and cheap, you need a small and cheap CPU. That's pretty much it. 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/ 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.
- jbb555 11y agoHow fast are the CPUs in these compared to say a modern i3, i5, i7 CPU? I know they will be a lot slower just interested in how much slower?
- fotcorn 11y agoHere are some benchmarks againt a Mobile i3 and i5: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=compulab-fitlet-i&num=4 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.
- tjbiddle 11y agoFor a $17 processor - That thing really isn't all that bad!
- josefresco 11y agohttp://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-4158U-vs-Intel-Atom-Z3735F#conclusion http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-4158U-vs-Intel-Atom-Z3...
- fizgig 11y agoIf the stick has enough power to play the majority of MAME games, this might be a nice addition to the home entertainment rig. I bought an Ouya a couple of years ago for this purpose, but I just didn't like it. Running a TinyXP installation on this stick with MAME32/MESS32 with a Bluetooth keyboard w/ touchpad from my comfy chair would be pretty sweet.
- fit2rule 11y agoI have an Intel Compute Stick and can confirm that it plays MAME very well. But then again the Rikomagic mk802 plays MAME just as well ..
- GordonS 11y agoHow is this thing powered?
- ddebruler 11y agoLooks like it has a micro USB power port on the side.
- milankragujevic 11y agoProbably with a cable to be plugged in to the microUSB port.
- GordonS 11y agoif this is a rebranded Intel device (looks like it), Intel says: "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? :/
- teekert 11y agoToo bad it makes me have to move my flat tv 10 cm of the wall. An HDMI connector at an angle would have been nice (or I could buy an extension HDMI cable of course.).
- ianlevesque 11y agoYeah for that reason the Apple TV or Fire TV form factor is better.
- dublinben 11y agoThe HDMI stick form factor works for the majority of TVs which have their ports facing to the side.
- jdietrich 11y agoDevices like this usually come with a very short HDMI extension for exactly this reason.
- eli 11y agoThe forthcoming Google Chromebit has a clever design that pivots so you can choose if you want the connector straight at the end or at a 90 degree angle to the rest of the stick.
- emsy 11y agoMany flatscreens nowadays have ports that are facing to the sides, so those people would've had a problem with an angled connector. I'd rather have power over HDMI to get rid of that annoying powercord to the stick :)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- gbl08ma 11y agoI own a Windows tablet (Voyo A1 Mini) with exactly the same CPU and amount of memory and storage, which I have been using as 7" keyboard-less laptop replacement, so I thought it would be interesting to share my opinion. 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.
- mirimir 11y agoI wonder if any hosting providers are offering such micro PCs, or planning to. They would be a great alternative to VPS, arguably with better security. I've seen some Raspberry Pi hosting, but its USB NIC is too slow. I'll update this if I find anything.
- thisishugo 11y agoYou could take a look at Scaleway[0]. They provide ARM-based dedicated servers (with caveats). [0] http://www.scaleway.com http://www.scaleway.com
- mirimir 11y agoSo these C1 ARM servers are built in house, I gather. Their features page says "true dedicated hardware", but I wonder how well those 18 servers on each board are isolated. IPMI could be a disaster. But thanks.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoThe Odroid C1 would be a better match for this than a Raspberry Pi 2. They both cost $35, but the Odroid C1 has Gigabit Ethernet plus a faster CPU (based on these tests at least... http://www.androidauthority.com/raspberry-pi-2-vs-odroid-c1-vs-hummingboard-vs-mips-creator-ci20-599418/ http://www.androidauthority.com/raspberry-pi-2-vs-odroid-c1-... ).
- mirimir 11y agoThanks! Now only if someone were providing hosting for them ... Maybe Raspberry Hosting[0] would be interested ;) [0] https://raspberry-hosting.com/en https://raspberry-hosting.com/en
- revelation 11y agoOVH offers dedicated servers using Intel Atom N2180 processors, which have a proper NIC (but no SSD).
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- jdietrich 11y agoIf you're wondering about the target market for these devices, the main answer is digital signage. Those LCD signs in train stations and shopping malls constitute a huge market for small, low-powered and fanless computers. There are at least a dozen SaaS startups in this space, targeting a wide variety of hardware and OSes.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoI doubt that this particular Lenovo mini PC is targetting that niche. You wouldn't need 32GB of storage for something as basic as digital signage, and there are Android-based alternatives for 3x cheaper... http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/mini-pcs/mk808-android-mini-pc http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/mini-pcs/mk808-android-mini...
- eli 11y agoI wish the MK808 was a plug and play digital sign, but it's actually kind of a pain to set up and use. I've got one sitting in a drawer. 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.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago"I wish the MK808 was a plug and play digital sign, but it's actually kind of a pain to set up and use. I've got one sitting in a drawer." 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)?
- eli 11y agoI tried one firmware (maybe it was finless?) downloaded from a sketchy looking site that cause the wifi to no longer connect. There did not some to be many firmware choices that supported 1080 output. Even getting an app to run automatically on bootup felt like a chore. 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.
- unklefolk 11y agoI don't understand why they have added a tiny speaker to this gadget. It wouldn't imagine it is very loud and in most cases would be stuck around the back of your TV. Could someone enlighten me to when a speaker would be useful?
- basch 11y agobeep beep error error
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoDiagnosing faults
- kev6168 11y agoJust the other day I was thinking it would be nice if a cell phone can fire up multiple normal OSs (i.e., desktop Linux/Windows/OSX), so at hotel/library/friend's home/etc., one can pull it out of pocket, connect to a display and hack away. I wonder when we can have that level of power and convenience in our regular phones.
- reddotX 11y agothis year, bq + ubuntu will launch a phone that does just that http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/06/first-ubuntu-phone-with-convergence-is-being-made-by-bq http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/06/first-ubuntu-phone-with-c...
- pjc50 11y agoThat's not so much a computing power limitation but a limitation imposed by the manufacturers on what you can run. The Nokia N900 had Linux running on it in 2010. If you're one of the lucky few with an Ubuntu phone, you can do this as well.
- rbanffy 11y ago> The Nokia N900 had Linux running on it in 2010 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.
- kev6168 11y agoI am not familiar with the specs of these phones. Does the Ubuntu phone (or its near future upgrades) has the capacity to _comfortably_ run, say, IntelliJ IDEA and make writing/compiling code a tolerable experience? That would be very nice.
- eli 11y agoWouldn't you need a keyboard too? Might as well just bring an Air at that point
- thrillgore 11y agoIt looks like a product not particularly solving any solution. The Chromecast solves a problem. This does not.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mindslight 11y agoYeah, Google's problem of how to spread their proprietary locked down experience to televisions.
- WorldWideWayne 11y agoEvery single TV in my house as a Windows device plugged into it. We've tried Roku, Chromecast and others - but you can't beat Windows if flexibility is what you want. 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.
- artmageddon 11y agoWhen you say device, can you give an example of what you're referring to? My wife got a me a Chromecast for Christmas, a great friend of mine got me a FireTV stick for my birthday loaded with emulators on it, but I'd really like to be able to carry a full-fledged PC around if that were possible.
- WorldWideWayne 11y agoSorry, nothing really portable - we have a couple of Zotac ZBOX "nano PCs" (http://www.amazon.com/Zotac-ZBOX-CI320NANO-U-W2-nano-Plus-Windows/dp/B00M4OEPLA http://www.amazon.com/Zotac-ZBOX-CI320NANO-U-W2-nano-Plus-Wi...) and the others are an old laptop (Dell XPS L502X) and an old Shuttle SH67H3 barebones PC. Each site except the laptop also has a Logitech K400/r wireless keyboard/touchpad which is great except when it occasionally loses signal.
- lorenzhs 11y agoBut that's 8 times the price of a Chromecast (if you include the keyboard and mouse). 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.
- bitL 11y agoCan you install Linux on it, i.e. is the boot loader unlocked? If so, it can be a great air-gapped stick for generating and storing keys and certificates on the go.
- johnchristopher 11y agoHow would the Baytrail Z3735F CPU that it is equipped with compare with a 6 year-old ATOM n280 ?
- neotokyo 11y agoCan these Baytrail processors handle HEVC / h.265 at HD well?