Chromebit rocks, and here’s why
Since their creation, computers have been shrinking steadily in size. From machines taking over entire rooms, to the giant leap which lead to desktop computers, to the super trendy (but staggeringly heavy) laptops of the late 90s, smaller has always been better. Well, now iPads and tablets aren’t even enough. The next step toward tiny living in the tech world is the Chromebit.
The Asus Chromebit is a stick PC and part of the Google Chrome family of products, which also offers an operating system, browser, the Chromebook and more. If you’re all for tiny living and that Macbook Air has gotten too heavy for you, a stick PC may be what you need.
The Chromebit is (obviously) portable, comes in three color combinations, and is under $100. The dongle itself is several inches long and approximately the size of a large thumb drive; one end is a USB port while the other is a swiveling HDMI head.
Although just a few inches long, the Chromebit packs quite a punch. The tiny stick PC contains a quad-core Rockchip processor, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, Bluetooth 4.0, dual-band 802.11ac wireless capability, and a USB 2.0 port.
“A marvel of engineering”
Caesar Senupta, VP of product management at Google said, “Asus actually really pulled off a marvel of engineering here, squeezing everything into this size,” about the Chromebit.
By simply plugging your Chromebit into the HDMI port of any TV or computer monitor, you suddenly have a Chromebook at your fingertips with a web browser, Chrome OS, and Google apps. Use a wireless keyboard and mouse (or plug both into the USB port of the Chromebit itself) and you’ve got yourself a simple set up in minutes.
Because of its low cost and easy setup, Google believes the Chromebit will be most popular with third-world countries and small businesses. It will also be useful for jet-setters and those who spend a lot of time on the road; imagine only having to pack the USB-sized Chromebit while travelling around the world!
Unfortunately for us, the Chromebit is not yet available for consumer purchase. However, there are a few stick PCs already on the market that run different operating systems if you’re itching to get your hands on one. Intel offers the Compute stick, there are a couple of Android models, and some from Lenovo and Archos as well.
