Gadgetory

what is the absolute least you can get away with spending on a desktop computer I'm Dan Ackerman and we are here taking a look at the a soos chromebit this is part of a small but growing category of systems that we call stick pcs until compute stick is a great example of that unlike that one however this guy runs Google's Chrome OS and if you're not familiar with Chrome OS it's what you find in Chromebooks it's basically Google's Chrome web browser a couple of file management tools and that's really about it so what do you do with something like the chrome bit well you take the stick you pop the top off and here you have an HDMI output and you just kind of jam that into any monitor or TV that has an HDMI port in it and you're connected and good to go almost much like the fire TV stick from Amazon or Roku stick or even a chromecast you need power so there's a tiny power plug right over here so you have to run a wire to a power adapter that plugs into a wall but then you're good to go you of course need a keyboard and a mouse as well you can connect bluetooth ones or you can connect USB dongle ones there is however only one USB port right here at the very end you can do a lot of the stuff that you would do you know on an everyday PC anyway and that's one of the things that appeals to people about Chrome OS a lot of email is done through web-based email whether it's Gmail or somebody else productivity you can use Google Docs you can use Microsoft's online office tools of course streaming video is very easy a lot of people do that through Netflix or through Amazon or through Google Play Photoshop is one of the things you're probably going to miss out on if you do photo editing there are online tools like Pixlr that are reasonably close to that and of course social media that's what all of us pretty much spend most of our online time doing anyway now all that stuff works fine on an online-only device like the chrome bit or any other Chrome OS system now how much you're going to pay for all this well that Intel compute stick which is kind of like this but runs Windows albeit slowly started out at about $150 you can get it for about 120 now a Chromebook is usually 150 to 250 this is Sue's Chromebook five dollars that's how much it will cost you to get basic internet connectivity and web browsing on your TV or your monitor if all you're interested in doing is streaming media then maybe you want to go something even less expensive like the Google chromecast which again is the stick that plugs in and cast media from the computer you already have but to set up a pretty simple on-the-go easy to transport desktop computer experience it's tough to go wrong if you only need basic online connectivity I'm Dan Ackerman and that is the Asuza chromebit