A computer the size of a USB stick

You could see it coming, a computer not bigger than a common USB flash drive. Is it a real computer? It is, except that upon seeing it you may want to go back to basics and ask the device maker: “please define computer”. Intel, Google and a couple of other, less known manufacturers have them ready for you right now, for about $120 a-piece. Intel calls it Compute Stick and Google Chromebit. And yes, you can have Microsoft’s Windows pre-installed on it!

Engineers will tell you that a digital device with some input-output capability, a processing unit, memory and a storage area constitutes a computer. In theory this is the essential definition of the bare minimum components that are required, and therefore it excludes peripherals screen, keyboard, mouse (or touch screen) and so forth. Practically speaking however, how do you work without all the latter elements?

The computer-stick concept is interesting but has serious limitations. Moreover it is very new and we still have to see what market penetration it may or may not claim in the coming few months. For now even the adventurous are looking at the device as it were a mere gadget, until proven otherwise.

Chromebit, Compute Stick and the like heavily rely on the Internet. By heavily it is understood that without a reliable and fast Internet connection all the time you cannot do much. “Fast” here means 8Mb connectivity to the web and preferably higher. Even in Western Europe the average speed available to the population today, estimated at 6Mb, would, therefore, not be enough.

So even if you accept the hassle to connect a real keyboard, a screen and a mouse, something that really defeats the purpose, the “stick” would virtually still be useless without a powerful connection.

To start with the device will “count on” the Internet to store data in the cloud, for its own storage is limited to 16GB for Chromebit and 64GB for Compute Stick. In both cases it is much less than what even the cheapest computer will give you. Memory also is restricted to 2GB and the processing of graphics will make you feel like it is crawling. Here again, heavy processing is made in the cloud and the result then returned to you via the same way. Hello Internet consumption!

The computer-on-a-stick is better seen as just a connecting node to the Internet, a window on the web, with most everything being stored and processed up there; that is if you accept it this way. Calling it a real computer is a bit too ambitious given all you have to add to it, not to mention its almost absolute dependence on the web.

A smartphone, though larger than a USB stick of course, makes much more sense these days. It already has a screen — superb ones actually, for high-end models — reasonably good processing power, a touch surface and tremendous functionality. It is perfectly usable without any addition. Even if smartphones today do count on the Internet in a certain way, they still function as pocket computers on their own, definitely better than Chromebit or Compute Stick anyway.

To consider the computer-on-a-stick as a gadget makes sense today. However, it may well evolve into something more substantial and independent. After all smartphones also were mere gadgets only a few years ago.