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Google Unveils the Chromebit: an HDMI Chromebook Dongle
An anonymous reader writes: Today Google unveiled a new device: the Chromebit. It's a small compute stick that contains the Rockchip 3288 processor, 2GB RAM, and 16GB of storage — much like a low-end Chromebook. It connects to a TV or monitor through an HDMI port. (It also has a USB port for power and plugging in peripherals.) Google says the Chromebit is their solution for turning any display into a computer, and it will cost under $100. Google also announced a couple of new Chromebooks as well. Haier and Hisense models will cost $150, and an ASUS model with a rotating display will cost $250.
Go on Aliexpress and search for "Android Mini PC" and you will find tons of these. These specs are fairly standard for that price. $100 for 2G/16G with hardware H.265 4k decoding.
Id rather have Android than ChromeOs.
It's more convenient to plug in a dongle and be done than to plug in a dongle, connect a smartphone, and then hope your application works with the Chromecast. A real hdmi connection will outperform the Chromecast screencasting by a couple orders of magnitude. Since it's Chromebook-like hardware, it'll run Ubuntu or other Linux - the same OS running on everything from desktops and radios to super computers. Programs can be written in any language. It has full remote management capability (ssh etc.) so you can set it up and everything from your desktop, using the same methods you use to manage servers over a network, unlike a smartphone.
I have one use-case right away. We want to hang a monitor or TV on the wall as a kind of digital bulletin board that has constant updates. This device would be perfect. We COULD use a smartphone and a dongle, but just a dongle (no smartphone needed) makes it simpler, and running Linux on the dongle means it's more powerful and flexible- I can program it in Perl, C, Ruby, or PHP rather than being forced to write an Android app in Java.