I honestly don't see the point in these.
Why not buy a linx 7 tablet for £39 and connect it to your tv through hdmi, you will still need a mouse/keyboard just like you do with this compute stick but you also will have a useful tablet for half of the price.

I've heard these are a bit of a nightmare to setup as they're fussy about what bluetooth keyboard and mouse you connect etc, I don't know if they're better now.

are these a good alternative to a laptop / desktop. I use laptop for office / streaming games / itunes (60gb of music) and internet. thanks for any advice

Price looks not bad , but what you will do with this low power device ?

Use as media PC yes you can, but after 1 day after 2 day updates restart updates restart and all problems with windows drivers etc ... ..
Use as PC but it is will be very low power PC for basic very basic usage

The best at the moment is Amazon Fire TV 4K price £64 as media PC

And if looking for PC i will be investing little more and at least core i3

http://gizmodo.com/intel-compute-stick-review-don-t-buy-it-1699377058

I'd steer well clear personally

I honestly don't see the point in these.
Why not buy a linx 7 tablet for £39 and connect it to your tv through hdmi, you will still need a mouse/keyboard just like you do with this compute stick but you also will have a useful tablet for half of the price.

Agree with paulandpam1.

The Tesco Connect and Linx 7" tablets have the same processor and storage (however only 1GB of RAM) and represent far better value for money.

I don't understand which niche this really fills but it's a well discounted offering so I'll admit that for anyone who does see it's value.

Personally I think if you want to upgrade a dumb tv to smart functions I'd be happier with a cheaper android offering, and if I want a cheap windows device I'd either spend a little more for a tablets added convenience or a lot less and get a refurbished pc from ebay. £15-30 these days gets you a very respectable small form factor PC from ebay which though not low power like this I still think makes more sense.

I was thinking about trying to use this to stream my Xbox One and play over a network.

But the review looks like that would not work easily.

the bluetooth and wifi being on the same chip is an issue. bluetooth devices do become choppy when the wifi is under a reasonable load.

although the reviewer mentioned overscan issues and no way to fix, which makes me question them. ive never had any issues with overscan except on one old hdtv which didnt have HDMI (used a HDMI 2 DVI to connect it).
quick look into the driver software (Intel HD Graphics, which is preinstalled) and there is the overscan settings. such a simple change that am amazed this reviewer missed it

personally id recommend the boxes with pretty much the same internals as this intel stick (z3735f, 2gb ram, 32gb mmc etc)
Pipo x8, x9, they have external power (not restricted by 0.5amp USB power), more USB sockets, spare screen, better cooling and dualboot android and windows. plus the 64gb version of the x8 and x9 have been cheaper than this in recent days

Just a small warning. Anyone buying this may run into issues getting the TH2 update. MS insists that you have at least 15GB free space.
It does give you the option to plug in a USB flash drive when it begins the preparation for installing the update but for me it just kept saying I need an additional 14GB of space even though I plugged in a 32GB USB drive.

Does anyone know if these run 32-bit or 64-bit Windows?

Could be ideal for plugging in the side of my TV and running Zwift. Only issue is they depreciated support for 32-bit recently, meaning I can't use my Dell Venue 8 Pro any more :disappointed:

32bit and it wont support 64bit even though the cpu supports it

There is a new Core M version early next year which should be much better (based on HOPE AND PRAYER !), wonder if the retailers know the release date and hence dropping the price of old stock

Your text here

Spare screen! Had me lol. Obviously not a comparable option but still had me laughing on an otherwise dull Friday, thanks.

You can get a Meegopad T07 with a better Cherry Trail X8300 for the same price that will have 64 bit Windows 10 pre installed albeit coming from the popular Chinese outlets.

The superior GPU on the Cherry Trail makes for far better video playback in Kodi over Baytrail as I found with my Tronsmart Ara X5.
.

Is this better than the r pi2?

Love the idea for a windows PC powered by a TV USB.
Would that not corrupt the OS if you switch off the telly?

The power adaptor is just a 5v 2amp Micro USB input (like most smartphones), so it could easily be powered by a TV's USB port.
In the old days PC's would get corrupted if the plug was pulled.
Surely, in this day and age Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 must have a failsafe against such an occurrence?

This is ideally suited to those with such limited space other than a keyboard, monitor and mouse. I can see quite a few education and other organisations that could benefit for this. However for personal computing at home and the general consumer... a bit pointless given tablets and other devices do a better job.

A mate just got delivery of the Morefine M1 dual boot stick (just like the Intel stick but also boots to Android.
She has it in her kitchen connected to a touch screen monitor.
Windows 10 works great Inc the touch screen via USB up-stream)
USB port powers portable hard drives, keyboard /mouse.
Bluetooth and WiFi work great too.
It runs hot when playing 1080p stuff so a £1 USB fan (powered by the stick keeps it cool).
Android runs smooth as butter and much cooler too.
Amazing what can be packed in to such a small device.
Shame there no way to get Android to work with the external touch screen but a bluetooth air mouse/keyboard works great.

She loves it.

is it possible to get this with windows 8 does anyone know?

There are similar devices from Morefine and Meegopad that run Windows 8 but finding them now is harder due to windows 10 being flavour of the month.
EBay, Banggood, Gearbest and a few others sell them and there are guides and downloads available to "recover" Intel based sticks that have the windows 8 image (activating the windows 8 licence could be a problem if your stick came with windows 10 unless you have a spare licence laying around).

@hezmeister .. This might also help you
http://maketheone.com/windows-8-iso