[section_title title=Closer Look]
Closer Look
Ventilation is good and has been thought out with 2 vents on top, 2 on the bottom and one on each side. So you shouldn’t have to worry about it overheating, it does get a little warm to the touch but nothing to be overly concerned about.
Top down view showing how the stick came packaged
Turning the stick over to the opposite side reveals the other USB2.0 port and the MicroSD card slot
The first problem we noticed was that the device is quite thick (110x43x9.9mm), so if you’re trying to use a HDMI port on the side of the telly, it’s probably not going to fit. We had to use a HDMI port at the rear of the device to make it fit comfortably. The other thing you could do is to use a HDMI extender cable like the one here to allow it to lie flat on the TV stand.
Next, the device needs power. I wasn’t happy with the adapter that came with the Meegopad, so I opted to use a Samsung Galaxy S5 charger instead, this worked flawlessly once powered on.
Once booted up we were greeted by the Windows 10 desktop, however the manufacturers had not completed the sysprep process correctly and we were greeted with the following dialogue:
Now don’t be alarmed if you get this, all you need to do is click the generalize checkbox and press OK, this will cause the machine to finalize the installation of Windows 10. Once done, you’ll be prompted to create a user account and to connect to the WiFi. Afterwards you get taken to the Windows 10 Desktop.
You get 32GB of built of storage. Even after Windows is installed, you have about 21GB free. If you need any more than that, you’ll need to use the built in Micro SD slot.
Windows 10 automatically activated and apparently there is another variant of the stick that can run Ubuntu Linux, but this isn’t possible yet on the one we received. That would have been pretty cool as a lightweight file/web server. There are rumours that a future BIOS update will make this happen. This is where the Intel Compute Stick has an advantage because it can run both Windows and Linux already. The version of Windows that is included is the Home Edition, which is more than sufficient, as you’re unlikely to need to join a device like this to a domain or corporate/environment.
