This should be compared to the Amazon FireTV Stick
Which only costs $40, for equivalent hardware. Gives some idea of how much Amazon is subsidizing them.
Intel has loosed its Chromebit-killer, the Compute Stick, on the market with pre-orders open at NewEgg, Amazon and other outlets. It's more expensive than the expected sub-$US100 price tag on Chromebit: a Linux Compute Stick is available at Newegg for $US109.99 and a Windows 8.1 version is $US149.99. Google seems to have done …
In one direction, Chromebit wins on WiFi, with 802.11 ac against Compute Stick's measly 802.11 b/g/n, while Intel has double the memory of Google's offering.
The table lists both as coming with 2GB RAM.
Intel certainly isn't giving up easily but one has to wonder about the wisdom of "Intel inside" for this kind of market. Google is pushing a completely Chinese kit with no OS licence fees, Intel chips cost more to make and then increases costs by having different models.
Hey c'mon, be fair guys.
It's not *that* long since the days when, if a table was needed in an article here, what you got was a *picture* of a table.
Can we not giive the boys and girls some credit?
OK, I'll get me coat, and me Raspberry Pi Beret.
Peace.
The biggest advantage and reason why the extra $10-$50 price is worth it is the use of an Intel Atom and not yet another Arm processor, which means you can really choose the OS to use.
It will have driver support for all the necessary things in a low power cpu environment. Good luck getting Linux hardware drivers for the Rockchip processor with full hardware support. It's still the achillies heel of Arm SOC systems, the poor manufacturer support with drivers. The Samsung Chromebook with the Samung Arm chip is still a closed shop for drivers, like most Arm based systems.
The Intel stick looks the best bet for a low power device at the moment. It is likely to be missing protected audio path in Windows for HD Audio streaming the same as the Z3735x based tablets/stbs, this shouldn't be a problem under Linux.
So for a low power all in one Steam/XBMC/MythTV/<streaming service of your choice> device/PC with full HD picture, Audio HD bitstreaming and X86 application support or a Chrome OS device with messy Linux install, partial/difficult driver support and cross-compiling or zero support for less popular applications...
Suddenly it doesn't look more expensive. I keep looking for a nice Arm based platform for the desktop, but the sticking point is still the hardware drivers, usually for audio and video. :(
I'm not sure why the Compute Stick needs alot of vents? If you compare to the other Windows 8 based stick PCs (e.g. http://www.stickpcstore.com/stick-pcs/shop/windows/stick_pcs.html) they don't have anywhere near the amount of vents (which is good in terms of preventing dust in the inner unit). The Hannspree is very similar in terms of specs? I have Googled and can't find anything in terms of overheating problems?!?!?!
I guess it's either for looks purposes because the designer said it was 'some made up garbage reason to look cool' or its to prevent the CPU throttling kicking in. I've no idea whether the Atom throttling would kick in before the case got hot enough to notice in something like the Hannspree.
For most use cases it probably wouldn't be noticed if the CPU throttled.