Damn, this is a sad day for the homelab.
The article says Intel is working with partners to “continue NUC innovation and growth”, so we will see what that manifests as.
Damn, this is a sad day for the homelab.
The article says Intel is working with partners to “continue NUC innovation and growth”, so we will see what that manifests as.
People ask for a lot of things. But it boils down to what they are actually trying to do.
The nuc was… a bad product. Power wise, the moment you do anything you start running into thermal issues. Getting a used one cheap is great for home automation and lightweight server work (hell, my router/firewall is more nuc than not). But in terms of actual user computing? A laptop is better in almost every possible way. If only because you aren’t mounting it to the back of a monitor: it IS the monitor. Similar (often much better) performance, similar thermal savings in a crowded office, and you can take your laptop into meetings or even home because 9 to 5 is just a suggestion when you are salaried.
In a lot of ways, nucs felt like a pretty big misstep even at the time. We already had thin(nish) clients in the form of the Solaris Sun ray and the like. Which, to a corporate environment, provides pretty much all the benefits AND a much more centralized security model (we see a shift back to that with the push for VDI solutions).
And from the conversation with that user: They want a computer for gaming. A nuc was never going to be that. A low-ish tier gaming laptop (I have a Razer Blade Stealth that I love) might do that. But they have their heart set on a “real computer”. MAYBE a nuc-like with a good APU could do that but… thermals. Which means, a desktop of some form. Whether it is an HTPC or a tower or whatever.
I get your point and I agree with you, but let me clarify what I was talking about.
The idea is a very small office where people don’t focus on working with computer, but rather use computer to help certain tasks, process payments, save something to MS Excel and so on. Those people don’t really need laptops, so stationary devices are perfect.
Just focus on what I wrote. I am the “admin” of such “small office”.
Intel nuc is perfect solution for me, the performance is more than enough and small size factor really takes the cake. I am really sad that NUC goes away and hope that soon there would be alternative. ✌️
And in that case, a thin client is probably what you want. And in a lot of ways, NUCs set that back pretty far.