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On 20/04/17 17:54, Neil via list wrote: > I have never really thought about them before, but after all the > problems with my desktop, yet to be resolved, I have come across a > mention of mini desktops. So I have had a quick look at them. Some of > them seem to be pretty powerful and yet not to be as expensive as I > would expect. > > Then I started to translate the metric sizes into inches (I still can't > get my head around a silly measurement like 350 mm). Some of them are so > tiny, it seems ridiculous to me that they can do anything. And what > about getting inside them for whatever reason? > > Does anyone on the list have any opinions or comments on these, to me > weird, machines? I can see that they don't take up so much room as a > tower, but you still need a decent sized monitor and keyboard. > > Just wondering, Think about the size of a modern top-end smartphone - and then subtract the bits you need to make just a computer. Strip off the keypad, antennae, battery, speakers and so on. You'll be left with an eight core 64 bit CPU and ~8Gb RAM plus a GPU, ~128Gb solid state storage and the dedicated circuitry to drive USB peripherals and wifi, bluetooth, GPS and telephony signals all on a SoC way smaller than a Raspberry Pi. Shrinkwrap it in a tiny little case with a couple of micro slots for the same power and peripheral ports as your PC and you could fit a stack of four of them inside a cigarette packet. Just one of them would run rings around a former high-end PC from 10 years ago in all but a few benchmarks. Welcome to the future. You're correct about getting inside of them though - whilst things like Intel NUCs and similar are considerably bigger than that, they do pack full scale x64 architecture into a form factor that is nonetheless tiny. Unfortunately a side effect of this impressive miniaturisation is the death of easy maintenance. I'm pretty sure the manufacturers don't want you to ever fix them, just chuck 'em in the bin and buy another one. Welcome to the past. Cheers -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq