With the announcement of the Compute Stick, Intel has signaled its intent to battle for market share at the low end of the mobile computing space.
Like existing compute-on-a-stick devices, Intel’s Compute Stick will transform any display with an HDMI port into a fully-functional computer.
At just 4-inches long, each Compute Stick will have a quad-core Intel® Atom™ processor inside. With that comes built-in wireless connectivity, on-board storage and a micro SD card slot. The processor speed has not been announced yet, but a quad-core ATOM processor on a compute-on-a-stick device seems like a lot of power.
That’s all good, but what makes the Compute Stick enticing to me is that it will come “pre-installed with Windows 8.1 or Linux”.
Not sure what Linux distribution(s) Intel intends to offer officially, but the prospect sets the device up as a good candidate for dual-booting your favorite Linux distribution and Windows 8.1. That’s why the device will be my first compute-on-a-stick device when it hits the shelves sometime this year. More information about the Compute Stick is available here.
Intel Compute Stick
