IInuyasha74 :
Gentlemen?
The title of the review says is all: "What Can You Do With An MSI Cubi?"
Given that it's use requires a separate display, keyboard, and mouse, the Cubi actually requires more space than a laptop and if you combine the cost of a Cubi - $144 barebones and $269- $400+ with CPU, HD, plus the display, keyboard, mouse, and OS, it could cost $800 or so, firmly into territory of quite a good laptop- which also has a battery and can be taken anywhere, requires less room, and is an integrated system ready to use- no assembly required.
In comparison, the Raspberry Pi 2 for $35 is even smaller, includes the CPU, is apparently about as capable, runs off a faster, and more compact flash drive that can run Windows 10, is more portable- and $100's less. There are some Pi user running multiples in a cluster and overall has a more enthusiast orientation.
In my view the review seems to have to missed the mark by emphasizing gaming performance- that's the very last application I would assume for this kind of system. Even in a schoolwork or office use, using it to write letters, bills or school essays, minimalist database entry, the Cubi is still a non-starter- there is nowhere in the World where desktop real estate is so precious, plus it requires a full-size monitor. For the low-demand office applications, there would be a $300-$400 i3 and 19- 22" monitor or all-in-one, much more capable and expandable for the same total cost.
It's even an incredibly boring industrial design- there are much more exciting looking server routers.
The MSI Cubi is one of those nice, fleeting thoughts that never should have landed.
Cheers,
BambiBoom
I'm not sure you completely understand what this system is. You would have to try rather hard to get to an $800 price tag with this system. The Cubi systems themselves cost between $143 and $479. One like I used in this article sells for $269.
http://www.newegg.com/MSI-Mini-PC-Barebone/BrandSubCat/ID-1312-309
So, starting off, you are $269 into it. You then can get a 2 x 4 GB set of RAM for $46:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148807&Tpk=N82E16820148807
A basic 320 GB HDD for $33:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BWPWXK/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=
A basic keyboard for $7 and mouse for $5:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0038M3YM8/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XGE0E4/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=
For the total system costs you are only at about $360. For anyone using this at home, they might already own a copy of Windows, but if not that can be bought for around $80, and just about any flat-screen TV or display can be used for the monitor. If a monitor is needed, you can find them online several places for around $70.
This is far from the $800 price tag you suggested, even if you have to buy a display and OS. Granted, you can buy a low-end desktop or laptop for that price, both of which will offer more performance, but both will also take up considerably more space. This isn't designed to be an extremely fast system, it is designed to be a system that can do office work and basic other tasks reasonably well, while at the same time being silent and very easy to hide out of site.
The Raspberry Pie argument honestly doesn't make sense. Yes that will work for a low-end machine to watch videos on and surf the web, but these systems are miles apart in terms of performance. I'm not entirely sure what gave the impression that they performed similar. The Raspberry Pie is way weaker than any modern Intel or AMD desktop or notebook processors.
IInuyasha74,
I'm not sure you fully understand the idea of proportional cost components, cost /benefit, and the low space efficiency of a component system. Yes, your example of $269, $46 RAM, $32 HD $12 ! for both keyboard and mouse, $70 monitor, and $80 OS totals $512 and that is not $800.
Still, for $500 I can buy a Dell Inspiron with an i3-5010U, 17" screen, 500GB HD, and Windows 10 -and the keyboard will be of higher quality than a "$7" one.
If I buy a high-end Cubi for $479, RAM for $46, a HD for $60 a K/B for $20, mouse for $12, OS for $80, and $100 monitor, the total is $787. Then there needs to be some kind of flash drive or external optical drive for I/O, say that costs $25-40, so something over over $800.
Now, compare this cost to a laptop of about the same cost, an HP Pavilion 17t. For the $815, it's possible to have a 17.3" screen,
i5-5500U (2core /4 thread 2.4 /3GHz), 8GB RAM, 1TB HD, DVD drive, Windows 10, keyboard, tracking pad, and optical drive. The most important addition is a GeForce 940M 2GB GPU. And consider the space usage and convenience. If you think that the separate Cubi system box, monitor keyboard, mouse, and external power supply occupies less space than the laptop, you may not fully understand that a laptop may also be quickly folded shut, moved to another location and run off a battery. With a Cubi, there's all the uplugging and putting things in a box and finding a plug in the next location. Since the news item was published I did see that there is a way to mount a Cubi on the back of a monitor, which does give a slightly neatness to the arrangement- I like that , but a reasonable cost all-in-one is still better and cleaner looking and with less pluggery.
Besides convenience, portability, and expandability, will the laptop with an i5 and 2GB GeForce also be more useful in- well everything? A lot of attention in the article was oddly related to gaming and I'm confident that the ability to add a dedicated GPU to a laptop means there's no contest with a Cubi in that use.
As for the Raspberry Pi, I think you don't fully understand what they're for. Example: A friend at NASA is using a pair of these to control and monitor telemetry for an experimental aircraft control system in a flight model (2M wingspan). Is a Cubi the system for this application? By the way, it's called- Raspberry
Pi as in the mathematical symbol, not "Pie" -but of course that's the joke.
Interesting discussion!
Cheers,
BambiBoom
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