Got an HDMI port handy? Sure, you could plug in a Chromecast, Fire TV Stick or Roku Streaming Stick to get your Netflix fix. Or you could pay $150 to get a full Windows 8.1 PC in the same form factor.
This is the Intel Compute Stick, a humble HDMI dongle that houses a full desktop computer experience. It’s not a particularly powerful one?you get a quad-core 1.33GHz Intel Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of solid state storage?but it does have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and both a full-size USB port and a microSD card slot for expandability. As long as you’re not gaming and find yourself a decent couch controller, you could probably do quite a bit from this tiny PC! Here’s the spec sheet.
More likely, it’ll find a home in small businesses, schools, and the like who want to roll out super cheap computers to their employees, since all you need is this stick, an HDMI monitor and a couple peripherals to get things cranking. Remember when the tiniest PC was a nettop that hooked onto the back of your monitor? Now they come in dongle-form.
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Read more at CES 2015
