Hannspree Micro PC: Another Contender for the Compute Stick Shelves

While Compute Sticks have been in the market for quite some time, no one seems to be the hot favourite. The Hannspree seems to have arrived with great specs and price.

Honey, I Brought my Office Desktop Home!

Imagine walking into your home one day with the 10 cm and 40 gm device in your pocket after work. While, in BYOD environments employees were lugging around their laptops, you are likely to find the same employees carrying their laptop in their pocket. I guess providing the monitors at the workplace will not be a big figure on the TCO budget. Truly great for the corporate IT spends. Hannspree comes in bundled with licensed Windows 8.1 another plus on the TCO front, I guess corporate users will get a bulk discount there too. The Hannspree Micro PC is just the right device as a cloud computing client.

Gaming Box?

You can have the whole gamut of PC Games installed on this device. Sorry can’t install Xbox games, but you never know, if this thing catches on soon you will have Xbox titles on the Compute Stick.

Streaming Video?

If there is one that Netficks/Hulu fans hate about watching movies on a Laptop or Chromecast is that they have to compromise on the display size and quality. Now that you have the Compute Stick, and you don’t want to watch your show on the bedroom TV, just plug it out and plug it in into the large screen in the drawing room, as easy as that.

Just for the record, the Hannspree Micro PC comes with 2GB DDR3 RAM, Intel® Atom™ Processor Z3735F , a USB 2.0 and a micro USB along with a micro SD Card slot to add external storage.

When the World is Hooked to a Pen Drive!

It was just a few years ago that we got in terms with cloud computing, and before the dust settled, we are now witnessing the arrival of stick computing. The SOC (System on a Chip) Architecture, so popular with mobile phone and tablets, was waiting to make inroads into the Personal Computing sphere, and came into existence the Stick PC. ARM processors were the leaders in integrating the first Stick PC using the Android OS but the Android-on-a-Stick  device was neither stable or popular nor did it catch anyone’s eye as it didn’t deliver anything more than the tablet.

It took some time for Intel to announce its Intel Compute Sticks in the market. It seems to be coming with a bang. They have two models lined up. One compute stick is a quad core processor with 2GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. This model has the right specs to support the Windows 8.1. The second one has lower RAM at 1GB and 8GB internal storage which would be supporting Linux. Both the Stick PCs have a HDMI Port, a USB Port and a SD Card Slot. All you need to have a full fledged PC is to plug the Stick into the HDMI Port of a TV or Monitor. You won’t need the Bluetooth mouse and keyboard if you have a touch sensitive monitor.

Now that you have a Stick PC, what do you intend to do with it? Some of the applications would be the same as that of your Tablet or the Chromecast device; like browsing the net and using multimedia over the net as you have the option of installing a vast array of players on the device.

The USP of cloud computing was that you would be independent of the hardware you are using. While it is true, users essentially had to have a laptop or desktop to access the cloud. The Stick PC would definitely meet the challenge and provide you with a device to connect top the net without compromising on the experience.

Integrators, who use the PC to create devices like the ATM, finally have a really flexible and easy to use device to build upon.

Linux and Windows 8 PC on a Stick

The economics and the ecology of the personal computing domain have such drastic changes that the companies who were integrating the hardware looking at the future were totally thrown off the tracks. Have we really settled for a device after we junked the desktop? 

Laptop

The laptop survives only on the corporate user’s workspace mainly because of the inability to move out of legacy applications and to login to their cloud. 

Netbook

The net book, it seemed such a wonderful device when it was conceived, but it looks so irrelevant today. 

Tablet

Very popular but the corporate user just pushes a tablet into their laptop bag along with the laptop.

PC on a Stick – New Kid on the Block

The new kid is the Stick PC. Yes it’s a PC packed into a stick the size of a pack of chewing gum. Just insert it in to the HDMI port of your TV or Monitor and voila…you have a PC in your hands. 

Cool, but where are the keyboard and the mouse? Oh they can be connected over Bluetooth.

Are you looking for disk space? Well there can be up to 32 GB of flash memory, and if you think you need more there is a slot for the micro SD card. Of course you have WI-Fi and USB ports too, to connect to the net. 

What more do you need? Operating System? Sure! No worries. 

The Intel Compute Stick Windows 8 comes pre-installed with Windows 8.1 at the cost of $149 with a 2GB RAM and 32 GB storage. 

The Intel Linux Compute Stick comes with lesser storage at an affordable price.  

We are soon going to see people carrying their Personal Computers on their car keys. Super and oh so convenient!