Thanks to Intel, I’ve been mucking about with the Intel Compute Stick. It’s a mini PC a bit bigger than a normal USB stick, with a HDMI port out and highly portable.

The stick turned up in a nice little box, around the size of a mobile phone box:

Inside was the stick, a HDMI extender cable, a Micro USB cable for power and a power plug with USB port.

Banana for scale of course.

Plugging it in and getting it going was easy, it’s the normal OOTB experience you’d get with any Windows PC. I used a Logitech keyboard/mouse combo with a bluetooth usb dongle to make things easy, and there was no special set up required – both devices just worked.

After setting it up and playing with it, I decided to try Windows 10 on it. I followed this guide, but my experience wasn’t the same – there was enough room to just upgrade without having to do extra storage stuff.

Once Windows 10 was installed, the device was a bit laggy; so I installed the official Intel drivers for Windows 10 on the stick, and then it was running smoothly. That’s fair enough for a new operating system and a new device.

I played around with a few apps, streaming media and so on, and the device ran really well.

If you have any questions, or want to know more about the device feel free to ask in the comments.

Two models available via Amazon:

Ubuntu: Intel Compute Stick Windows BOXSTCK1A32WFC

Windows 8.1 with Bing: Intel Compute Stick Linux BOXSTCK1A8LFCCR

Update 20th August 2015: I’ve written a much more detailed review at The Register