Over the past few months, we have seen several miniature, pen-drive shaped computers from unfamiliar companies. At the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show event in Las Vegas, we have one from a very trustworthy manufacturer. Chipmaker Intel announced Compute Stick, a USB dongle which is capable of running both Windows and Linux. Highlights of the device include its reasonably impressive processing power, tiny form factor, and price tag of $149.
As far as the specifications of the Compute Stick are concerned, it is powered by a quad-core Intel Atom processor paired with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. The Compute Stick runs on Windows 8.1 with Bing, which if you remember, is a full-fledged version of Windows 8.1 with Bing.com as the default search engine in the Internet Explorer. It is also free, which makes it possible for manufacturers to keep the price of their product cheap.
The company also announced that it will be releasing a less expensive version of Computer Stick with Ubuntu, a Linux-based operating system installed on it with stripped hardware. The version will have 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. Users can connect the Stick to a large screen (or small screen) and use it the display of the Compute Stick. The Compute Stick could help schools, offices, and budget-constrained organizations, or anyone else, to have a computer at cheaper price point.
Further reading: CES 2015, Compute Stick, Intel, Linux, Microsoft, Windows, Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 with Bing
