Quad-Core PC on a Stick $99 !!

Originally posted by unityemissions
I think that in a year or two, there will be absolutely no reason for the average home user to purchase a desktop. We'll have tablets, smartphones, and these thumb computers powerful enough to do everything except hd video editing and high end gaming.

Well just to complete the list, there is still word processors and spreadsheets and other such office stuff that I need. Photo processing. Data warehousing. I do some of it on my tablets now, but nothing beats a traditional PC with an expensive keyboard and a large screen for ease of work. I can also prototype some software on one of my boxes, which is easier than doing it on tablets.

There's even a $99 gaming system coming out based on the same tech:

ouya

Saw it before. Now, that's what I call a gimmick. And somehow, "ouya" sounds like "ouch" to my ears. I'll pass.

reply to post by buddhasystem


Definitely not a gimmick, but I don't expect it to be a hit, either. It's the first gaming system I'm aware of which is fully open-source. Hopefully it's the future of gaming.

Originally posted by unityemissions
reply to post by buddhasystem

 

Definitely not a gimmick, but I don't expect it to be a hit, either. It's the first gaming system I'm aware of which is fully open-source. Hopefully it's the future of gaming.

Wait, Android is open source. Android SDK's are freely available. If they have their own Android distro, there is nothing good about it in the first place.

There are 10,000 bazillion games developed for Android already, a lot of them quite good. Why does anyone need an uch: device, I simply don't know.

reply to post by buddhasystem


My only use for one of these things would be to share music. A tiny portable PC would be very handy.

Originally posted by buddhasystem

 

Wait, Android is open source. Android SDK's are freely available. If they have their own Android distro, there is nothing good about it in the first place.

Somehow you've missed the point entirely, lol.

There are 10,000 bazillion games developed for Android already, a lot of them quite good. Why does anyone need an

uch: device, I simply don't know.

Maybe because the games weren't developed for a big screen, and controller. Think this one through for a minute. . .

Originally posted by unityemissions

Originally posted by buddhasystem
Don't be on the bleeding edge. There seems to be proliferation of these devices, it's a good idea to let this market mature a little.

One reason I'm not buying one is that I have a good tablet and a long HDMI cable. This rig can run circles around these Android "sticks", graphics included, with Nvidia Tegra 2 (or 3 in newer tablets). And the UI is way better.

Agreed. Most people should let the tech mature, and it seems to be rapidly changing by the weeks. I think that in a year or two, there will be absolutely no reason for the average home user to purchase a desktop. We'll have tablets, smartphones, and these thumb computers powerful enough to do everything except hd video editing and high end gaming.

There's even a $99 gaming system coming out based on the same tech:

ouya

I don't look at myself as a high end user. I just roam the net, edit my own home vids, pics and sound files, do a bit of streaming on the side and administrate my webshop. Nothing out of the ordinary really. Except for one tiny thing.. I like to multi-task like an idiot.

I'll let this tech mature until it can do this for me.




Nonetheless, the tech is interesting and I thank you for bringing it to my attention. The future is bright.

footnote: The next update on my system will be one of these.

reply to post by unityemissions


Good points.

I'll still pass


By the way, if I had more time, I would have bought a few $30 sticks and build a Cassandra cluster just for the heck of it.

Originally posted by Wide-Eyes
reply to post by buddhasystem

 

My only use for one of these things would be to share music. A tiny portable PC would be very handy.

Share how? Thing is, a good Android phone could do that, depending on your requirements. I'm already storing some of my music in the cloud, and using my phone to play it back when I need to.

Originally posted by unityemissions

It will come ready to go with Jelly bean Android 4.1 OS, but there are guides to setting up Linux distros online as well!

Linux would be nice but I wonder if the Jelly Bean crowd will get some value-added stuff in the background .... like maybe Carrier IQ?

reply to post by RMFX1


awwwwwww. spoilsport

This is a new trending tech - Windows to Go is another. Windows 8 on a USB flash drive. I've been looking at these for making easier for our employees to work on construction sites with a fully imaged, secure, up-to-date OS with needed apps.

Pity they tried to make Windows 8 into a huge smartphone with apps.

Originally posted by fleabit
This is a new trending tech - Windows to Go is another. Windows 8 on a USB flash drive. I've been looking at these for making easier for our employees to work on construction sites with a fully imaged, secure, up-to-date OS with needed apps.

Pity they tried to make Windows 8 into a huge smartphone with apps.

Interesting! And that USB stick plugs into what?
If it's not a secret, what apps do you need?

reply to post by RMFX1


Yah you are right, it wont scale the way he wants, you'll end up getting an average of speeds as not all chips even off the same line are the same speeds, but if the average of the speeds can compete with the higher end 10k+ comps then you might have something. ^^

I highly doubt you could without over clocking them and then you would have to cool 20-40 usb sticks that are 340 degrees each without proper cooling you'll discover what the cavemen discovered....fire!! lol

It would be pretty sick though to make a cube just out of usb's and some extreme cooling solutions like vapochill,liquid nitrogen, or liquid helium in an aquarium or something (good luck on the last one ^^)

Unless I'm mistaken, there are many diff. brands of these sticks, all from China, and all with mixed reviews. I think I will wait till a major player gets involved, ie. Asus, Samsung, etc. They're great for tinkerers, but I'm not sure they're ready for prime-time yet.

Originally posted by unityemissions
reply to post by ErtaiNaGia

 

I just typed in i.mx6 in a search on the link above and it pulls up some specs:

Freescale i.MX6 Quad Core CPU&GPU 1.2GHZ
1GB RAM + 8GB Flash
Android 4.0 OS (Android 4.1/4.2 upgradeable)
Support Full HD 1080P resolution play
True 1080P HD decoding the perfect hardware solution
Built in WiFi module 802.11b/g/n,max speed 150Mbs
Built-in Bluetooth makes you transport music ,data and listen to music freely

GeekBuying

The only thing that kinda sucks is you have to power the thing from the wall socket with an adapter. I'm thinking this tech will push a new standard that will allow up to 15w or so coming out a new HDMI socket. Something like that is much needed.

edit on 26-12-2012 by unityemissions because: (no reason given)

It may be able to play 1080p videos. But whats going to tear this apart is that it cant play PC games. I know, not everybody buys a computer for gaming, but in todays age a computer should at least be able to run WoW or CoD, Unreal, etc.

Originally posted by RMFX1

Originally posted by dc4lifeskater


I am working on clustering these I want to see if I can put 10 of them together which would only be like $600 or so and have a super crazy awesome fast linux powered cluster that is faster then a $1000-2000 computer :0

Yeah..good luck with that mate. For one thing, how fast is it actually? Clock frequency has little to nothing to do with actual performance when comparing 1 model of CPU to another. Just because CPU A is 1.6GHZ and CPU B is 1.8GHZ does not automatically mean that CPU B is the faster chip. It all depends on the architecture amongst other things. So you thinking that you can chain 10 of them together and get what I guess you think will be a 40 core "cluster" running at 1.2GHz per core. And that that's going to get you something like a 48GHZ machine.

You're dreaming. That's not how it works and in reality things don't scale that way. Just look at SLI as an example or probably even more fitting would be running dual CPU Xeons. You never double your performance by simply adding an extra CPU. And not only that, if the software that you're running is thread limited to 1 2 3 4 or 8 physical cores you're going to see no advantage at all by adding more and more CPU's even if it's possible.

And also take into account that modern day servers and for that matter even desktop gaming PC's require massive heatsinks that pull the heat out and away from your CPU just to keep them from burning to a crisp, so how on earth are these things going to have any sort of meaningful performance output all the while running passively cooled in a very very restricted space?

The real bottleneck if thinking about a cluster, is there is no real system bus, and you are relegated to performing inter-processor cluster SMB via a serial interface (USB3) . That means huge interrupts, and totally defeats the performance you want to achieve via massive parallelism . Now, if they come out with a hyper-transport parallel bus that can hook these puppies together, then you may have something, then you would have to deal with the heat.....

This is pretty awesome and sparked my interest a lot since I'm really into technology aha. The only thing is, though I find it awesome, I'm not sure how "open" I'd be to using it. Guess I'd have to catch it on perhaps a YouTube video or something before giving it a go. But hey, it's plug and play so that's definitely a bonus to me! Like a previous poster said, pretty upset I, too, found out after Christmas and not beforehand.

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reply to post by unityemissions


Whoa, that's awesome!

Originally posted by unityemissions

Originally posted by buddhasystem
Don't be on the bleeding edge. There seems to be proliferation of these devices, it's a good idea to let this market mature a little.

One reason I'm not buying one is that I have a good tablet and a long HDMI cable. This rig can run circles around these Android "sticks", graphics included, with Nvidia Tegra 2 (or 3 in newer tablets). And the UI is way better.

Agreed. Most people should let the tech mature, and it seems to be rapidly changing by the weeks. I think that in a year or two, there will be absolutely no reason for the average home user to purchase a desktop. We'll have tablets, smartphones, and these thumb computers powerful enough to do everything except hd video editing and high end gaming.

There's even a $99 gaming system coming out based on the same tech:

ouya

I worry about this. If the "average home user" stops buying PCs, downgrading to laptops and tablets instead,and if the average businness user follows suit, people like me will be forced to either pay exhorbitant prices for good desktop technology, or downgrade with the rest. It's sad that just as computers are becoming really, really powerful and useful, the market is ready to break them into little chunks focused on playing music, updating Facebook and Twitter, and browsing the internet. I guess it is what it is, and those of us who want "real" computers will one day just have to suck it up and pay stupid money for components.