Exactly what's the point of mini PCs?

Exactly what's the point of mini PCs?

idk
if you travel a lot but don't want a laptop?
idk
i live overseas and it'd be kind of nice to have one i guess (i don't)

Takes up less room. Usually less power hungry. Good for grandparents and kids.

But why not get a laptop at this point?

Laptops are larger.

Plug it into a TV

save space. i have a client running an Acer mini PC as a solidworks licence server, it sits tucked away on top of their network cab.

it's nice for a home center

>Factory IT Guy

The rugged OEM computers we used to run different types of equipment had severely outdated hardware despite coming brand new from the manufacturer and cost 4-5x more then an equivalent consumer brand mini PC. We stick a mini PC in a rugged pelican case that floor workers are not allowed to open and equipment reliability has gone up significantly. Even increased productivity for the terminals that required employee input due to the better hardware loading UI's faster etc.

This is actually fairly popular now-a-days in factories and heavy industry. The only place where you can't do this is in controlled environments that can't have sparks, flame, or contamination as the OEM stuff is rated for that and consumer is not.

office

I might do this and use them as thin clients, maybe velcro then to the backs of the monitors
The monitors already have USB hubs and speakers built in so we can have ghetto all in ones

>Exactly what's the point of mini PCs?
minicomputing

this might be hard for most the the manchildren here to grasp but a lot of people out there aren't manchildren and don't need $1000 gpu's and huge power slurping rigs with 27 fans sounding like a craftsman leaf blower just to write code or do some web browsing.

I have one I paid a little over 100$ that I keep plugged into my TV and speakers in my living room. I use it to play music, watch movies and shows. Having a nice small centralized place for media consumption is comfy AF. Easily beats a meme SmartTV with none of the botnet that comes with it.

>craftsman leaf blower
kek
tru tho

Get it for your great aunt sally

They are much cheaper than laptops. My school uses them, they make great thin clients. Normies have no idea they're running in a VM

True, but as I already said, a laptop does the job just fine and it's more versatile. And not only that, its portability includes also all needed peripherals to actually use it (monitor, keyboard...) all the while taking just a tiny bit of space more.

>cheaper
If you take into account also a monitor, keyboard and mouse, not at all.

>with none of the botnet that comes with it.
sure

If I don't need to carry it, and I don't need or want a screen attached to it and would prefer to use a monitor or TV. I mean, you're basically asking "why buy a desktop when you can buy a laptop".

>mouse and keyboard
you can buy them for less than 25$ each. They don't add to the price at all. There's no reason to pointlessly add them to enforce your argument.

explain yourself

It's almost like you're assuming whatever software I'm running on it without any clue. Stop being such a sperg.

the small size of it, duh
no one wants to carry a tower around

See

Why would you buy a laptop when you can buy a desktop?

If you just want a desktop, then all the extra things included in a laptop (battery, keyboard, trackpad, screen) are just things you will never use but cost extra money.

>people have to get new peripherals when they replace their old tower
>getting a laptop for home-only use is a good idea

100% this
Weve been adopting them as well for our factory, price:performance point cant be beat
Planning on getting one as well for home use hooked up as a better "smart" tv

I remember seeing vesa mounts for NUCs a while ago. Something to think about.

I had one in my bedroom for Netflix etc but the wifi is total shit so it's useless. Replaced it with a thinkpad

Not everyone is a developer or a sys admin or a computer engineer. Some people are content with using their computers for the basics.

To be able to watch pornography on the go in a not trash way.

It costs less, occupies less space, consumes less power and it looks nicer than your classical huge PC box.

Most people don't need a huge PC box anymore to get shit done. Heck, you can even game on the ones with beefy specs.

Where can I buy the best mini PC? Which vendor has the best power to price ratio?

Because laptop screens are insufferably shit if you don't get anywhere near 2000$.
Mini-pc are a good compromise that could combine the portability/quietness of laptops with the comfort and quality of a proper 24" IPS

A proper keyboard instead of a shitlet is a bonus too.

The problem is something the workers can fuck with, so an AIO or mini PC is a good solution

This
Setup a couple chrome boxes for teleconference rooms mounted on the wall behind/next to the screens. Chrome os was a bit of a mess (Hangouts didn't recognize the OMFG WE SUPPORT CHROME OS Logitech webcam), but the form factor was excellent.

Idk i used one as my java dev machine for 2 years and its slow as fuck. MacOS is nice though, i miss that part

Lots of offices use them, because when you work you don't need a beefy GPU.

A decent CPU, an SSD and maximum RAM are enough for most daily workloads for a dev/office/media machine.

Some of them can even do some gaming, if you're not autistic about mah 345345 FPS on maximum graphics in overcucks.

great for wiping that bitch of an OS Windows installing Ubuntu or Debian and getting some actual work done

Being cheap and small for instances where you don't need a huge GPU, lots of storage or bigger amounts of RAM / processing power.

Chinese HTPC like that are fairly ideal to equip your TV with its computer. There are smart TVs, but these basically all suck balls.

Oh wow, you're not using any CPU made in the past 10 years?

With all of this said and done, what mini PCs do you guys recommend?

The one with the correct specs for your usage.

Yea, it's different between a machine that will be used to view videos on a TV and one that will be used to act as a (not completely) low end networked server or such.

But I generally do recommend ordering them in typical /csg/ stores, the ones available in Europe are usually too shitty / expensive.

I'm not.

Id avoid any HP ones
At work we ordered 4 elitedesk 800 miniPC's, 3 of which had incredibly annoying coil whine.
Irrelevant for our use, but unusable for anything directly near the user in an office environment or home related.
I like the hardware and construction though.