NUCs and the like.

Anyone done anything with them? Got any general advice / recommendations?

I have various things I wanted to do with Pis, but I can't be doing with the whole ARM stuff - I want x86 compatible so software will run.

I have a whole bunch of ideas involving different machines - like easily half a dozen, maybe more - so I don't really want to be looking at the £500 stuff or it'll get unnecessarily pricey and in most cases a cheaper one will do, but equally I don't just want to splurge on a bunch of £50-100 devices that are shit designed for slow plods to attach to TVs.

I've got an HP Chromebox. Admittedly it's hooked up to a TV but it's a nice little device.

I installed a custom firmware so it's now running Openelec rather than chromeOS. You can put "nix or Windows on instead if required.

Intel will be releasing are releasing a Compute Stick soon that has a quad core atom cpu. You can already get Meegopad T01 which seems to be exactly the same cpu/spec, only you'll probably have to buy it on ebay from some random seller in Hong Kong.

There's also these that are the same but with an ethernet port
http://www.gearbest.com/pipo-x7-_gear/

Shame the GPU with that Atom processor is really basic.

Interesting, thanks.

Any idea how a quad core Atom compares to a dual core Celeron? I was looking earlier and they seem relatively even, though the Atom is only 32-bit? (Which is probably fine, but bugs me a little.)

I don't think I need fancy graphics for most of what I want - will generally be headless, or maybe just a lightweight WM for some.

Generally speaking I look at this from a HTPC perspective rather than for projects, but you could do worse than look at Zotac's stuff, the Q190 from Lenovo and the Asus Revo range. They all run a mixture of Celeron and i3 processors. As well as the NUC range obviously, there's also the HP Stream (U.S. website).

Actually, there's a tonne of these things if you google 'net-top'.

Or a Mac Mini...pffff!

There's a load of Celeron 1037U based boxes around too which are fairly cheap.

That Intel Atom Z3735F which is in the boxes Sinky mentioned is actually 64 bit.

And this

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/NEW-Fast-shipping-CS928-mini-PC-Intel-Atom-Z3735F-CPU-CS928-smart-computer-2GB-DDR3-16GB/32279884811.html

even at current exchange rates looks very cheap.