
Intel Compute Stick review: Second time's the charm - aleem
http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/22/intel-compute-stick-2016-review/
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rebootthesystem
> It feels more solid in your hand

Something I learned soon after I launched my first hardware product:

People still have an instinctive physical relationship with products that must
be the result of evolution making a connection with heavy or solid = more-
food/safer/better or something like that.

I remember devoting a ton of time to making my first product as light as
possible through sophisticated mechanical design and attention to component
choices in the electronics.

During my first trade show in Europe, this Italian guy came by multiple times
to look at the product. He asked for a price on his second visit. It was USD
$8,000. The next day he came back one last time and asked: Why is it $8,000 if
it is so light?

Absolutely blew my mind. Was not ready for that question at all. Upon return
to the US I directed our sheet metal vendor to switch from aluminum to steel
of the same gauge. We also added a small steel bar riveted to the inside to
increase the weight a further. In all, I think we easily added about five
pounds to the thing. Now it was "worth" $8,000.

Over the next three years sales and comments during sales presentations
proved, in no uncertain terms, making it heavier had been exactly the right
move. People would make comments when they picked up this damn paper-weight
such as "wow, feels solid", "wow, lots of tech in there", "wow, I know why it
cost so much now".

It was amazing to see how many times the moment the deal was done coincided
with the instant they picked it up.

Amazing.

~~~
protomyth
Good advice. Some markets do value lightness such as Video Cameras. There, you
can sell the Carbon Fibre model for a premium because its lighter. I do wonder
if you had a heavy version and a light version with the light version being
priced higher, would it work?

~~~
cnvogel
...so at one point, when it no longer is economically viable to produce two
different housings, you'll paint over the carbon and glue in lead weights for
the cheaper version...

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Sanddancer
For the money, I'd rather get one of the Kangaroo mobile desktops. They're
specced the same as the compute stick, but are $60 cheaper, or for $10 more,
you can get a model with 4 gigs of ram and 64 gigs of storage. The detachable
dock is a bit weird, but if you're going to be swapping it between two places
could definitely prove useful.

~~~
techsupporter
> for $10 more, you can get a model with 4 gigs of ram and 64 gigs of storage.

Is that still the Kangaroo? I can only find one model listed on their site and
I want one...

~~~
bentpins
[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856659...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856659001)
I found it, but the $100 variant looks like better value with it's Windows
license and identical processor.

~~~
orbitingpluto
It’s got a 32-bit UEFI Bootloader which isn’t Linux friendly. Just like most
compute sticks. I think even the Intel Compute Stick with Linux on it was
limited to Ubuntu 12.04...

I spent an afternoon once getting Linux to run on the Lenovo stick and an HP
Stream 7. I returned them because I don't ever want to have to do that again.
I can't even picture using one of these on a daily basis.

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ComputerGuru
I didn't expect it to be a hundred and fifty dollars; that's a little high for
such a product with these specs in today's world of $10 to $20 "micro
computers". It's a pretty awkward price point, given that it has a niche
market but is being marketed as if it didn't..

~~~
fapjacks
Intel keeps doing this, pricing their products as if they can charge a ton
just because something has "Intel" printed on the box. They want to be Apple,
but I think at least for these kinds of specialty products (also for example
like the NUC or the Minnowboard or whatever that thing was called), their
target demographic isn't the same kind of person as an Apple customer. At
least, there's no way _I_ would spend $200 on something that is only slightly
more powerful than a RPi. I feel like they keep pricing themselves out of the
market with these kinds of devices.

~~~
cnvogel
... also their naming schemes are really annoying. There are almost identical
chips sold as a "Pentium", "Celeron", "Xeon", "Core"... with random features
turned on (or disabled). Now we get " Atom X".

I can totally understand how it serves Intel to squeeze the most out of
corporate buyers, and also it allows one to get a bargain from time to time...
But I think in general it's just confusing and annoying.

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joenathan
I really love these little things. I use these as dumb terminals to RDP into
virtual machines. It makes adding and replacing workstations very cheap and
quick. Also more secure, where you can keep file sharing locked down to a
internal private virtual network not exposing much of anything to the physical
network. One thing I would love is an Ethernet port, but I know that it too
much to ask.

~~~
rebootthesystem
Having actually used "dumb terminals", like the DEC VT-100, Qume QVT-101 and
others over RS-232 connections and shoe-box sized modems way back in the 80's
I found the start of your comment to be somewhat funny.

Not criticizing your post at all. Simply making the observation that what we
might call a "dumb terminal" today is a million miles away from where this
term originated. Just like the "film industry" is really the "digital image
industry" today.

I remember running AutoCAD 1.2 on an 8086-based S-100 CP/M system with the
addition of an 8087 match co-processor card, 640K of RAM, 1 MB on a RAMDISK
card, a tablet with a puck that used a magnetic coil to sense position and,
yes, a DEC VT-100 "dumb terminal". Sometimes I had to unload stuff from memory
just to be able to plot. Fun times. Funny that today developers think stuff
like vim is cool. We couldn't wait to get off those damn terminals and use
"real" editors.

Who knows what Ctrl-K-X belongs to?

~~~
chris_st
> Who knows what Ctrl-K-X belongs to?

WordStar?

~~~
sbd01
GRRM's favorite word processor.

------
bikamonki
I actually work daily on my Asus thin desktop (very similar specs). I run
Ubuntu though. The fact that my mini pc makes almost zero noise is great and
it does feel good to be a bit greener with the power savings. Funny thing is
that I got the Asus to test webapps (I do mostly front-end). I use the
browser's dev tools to emulate slower Internet connections but I don't know
how to emulate slow processors/tiny RAM (maybe there is a way?). After a while
I just never went back to my laptop, tweaked Ubuntu to make the Asus faster
and more capable and ended up coding on it for good. Now, if my apps do well
on the Asus they fly on 'average' hardware.

~~~
cnvogel
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/cgroups](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/cgroups)

This post has an example on how to limit a process (in this instance it's
Matlab) regarding it's memory use an the CPUs it will allow to be scheduled.

To limit the CPU further, you might want to use the "userspace" cpufreq
governor and allow down your CPU clock.

------
msoad
I used to love Engadget but with recent redesigns it had become too hard to
navigate and find what you're looking for. A simple blog format was just fine
in my opinion.

~~~
wlesieutre
You're not supposed to find things, you're supposed to accidentally click on
ads.

------
bitwize
Buy a keyboard with integrated USB hub and ports. Then you can plug your rat
into the keyboard without taking up valuable ports on the system.

This PC is a little weaksauce to be running Windows, but for typical Linux
applications it's overkill. I don't know what its niche is, except as a
terminal server or digital sign -- not exactly growth markets for home users.

Businesses will eat it up.

------
atrudeau
Ouch, this hurts. Bought a Compute Stinks in January. Slow as a steamboat.
Slower than my 3 year old Celeron netbook. Now this thing comes out that looks
half decent.

~~~
mappu
Counter-anecdote: I own a first-gen compute stick, and cannot understand why
every online review is so negative. My device works wonderfully, i don't have
performance issues at all. But for some reason the industry has decided to tar
a perfectly serviceable computer.

