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Intel's official position is that the ComputeStick (a $128 computer, with 2GB RAM, a 32GB SSD, and an Atom x5-Z8300 CPU) is locked down to the Win10-32 Home OS which they ship with it, and cannot be re-OSed. They have further gone to great lengths to prevent the internal SSD from being imaged with utilities such as Acronis, Ghost, etc.
Not only do I have Win10-64 Enterprise LTSB running on it, but Linux to the rescue! Turns out that a Clonezilla LiveUSB stick (AM64 alternate build, as we need UEFI for this device to work) can both read and write the internal SSD, and if you use GParted to shrink the primary Linux partition and create a secondary FAT32 partition on the stick after loading the initial ISO, you can even save the image itself on the same stick!
I can now mass-produce Computesticks with Win10-64 LTSB in about 10 minutes each. Just made two of them, and a third is burning in the photo above. And, with an Enterprise key, I don't even have to individually re-authorize each one.
No more bullshit updates. No more automatic reboots. No more bloatware. I can now actually deploy these cheap-*** little machines in mission-critical applications!
For the record, NB Miata aluminum hood thickness is 1.2 mm with paint.
Strip all paint carefully from both sides, and you get 0.8 mm.
So there.
And, this is how I know:
I "cut" the radius corners with a hole saw, and proceeded to very cleanly cut the rest with a 8615 hss metal blade attached on a jig saw with moderate speed setting and plenty of WD-40.
Cut through the hood and corresponding underbracing simultaneously, in one clean pass. Does not even require sanding the edges.
(Taped the hell out of it, of course)
Next, I 'll cover the entire hole with tape and paint the edges from the bottom. That should cover up any exposed bare metal.
Oh, hell yes. Add a small touchscreen and a little bleutooth keyboard and this is the ultimate in-car PC.
That's the cool thing about these. Unlike a Firestick / Chromecast / Roku / whatever, these are real, full-fledged Windows PCs which are also capable of running any x86 Linux build. They're not especially fast, and they don't have a lot of RAM, but for situations in which the user is only going to run a few applications, they are amazing. (And, did I mention, ludicrously inexpensive.) If you're not into gaming, you could use one as your primary desktop machine.
For purposes of comparison, the Atom x5-Z8300 yields a Passmark score of 1197, which puts it slightly ahead of a first-gen i5. So it's basically equivalent in performance to a six year old laptop, but at a miniscule fraction of the price, in a form-factor that requires only velcro for mounting, and runs on a 5 volt micro-USB power supply.
Originally Posted by Godless Commie
For the record, NB Miata aluminum hood thickness is 1.2 mm with paint.
Strip all paint carefully from both sides, and you get 0.8 mm.
Actual email that I sent to the corporate VP of Technology this morning, requesting a capital account (CAR) number for a budget that was recently approved:
Actual email that I sent to the corporate VP of Technology this morning, requesting a capital account (CAR) number for a budget that was recently approved:
The image I uploded was Jar-Jar saying "Weesa gonnna need a CAR number for OAC (Volicon Replacement)", rendered in the proper Star Wars subtitle font and color.
I Ctrl-V'ed this picture into the Upload Image tool. It it well within any reasonable boundaries of image-resizing. I see the image both in my original post and in Six's reply which quotes it.
Edit: and now that I'm logged in from a different machine, of course, I don't see the image @IB Nolan
While IB's software is not working especially well, my Computestick assembly line is.
Cranked out seven more units this afternoon during two episodes of Parts Unknown, and that's pretty good considering how intoxicated I am and the fact that I didn't get to sleep until about 4 this morning.
(**** daylight saving time right in the *** with a cattle prod wrapped in rusty barbed wire. My loathing for DST is nearly as deep as for the VBulliten software.)