Most likely! He is clearly not a Native English speaker, so he makes mistakes all the time - but he also speaks Portuguese AND Spanish.

@@GeekDetouroka

You are absolutely right! I am using the same old computers for quite a LONG TIME - so, yes! Very out of touch. I find it very impressive for the price ❤️ I suppose this video is for old folks like me that are missing out on getting something super new, very affordable, to be dedicated little computers (like I will do for my laser machine).

I would not call him out of touch, it was just bit of a weird comparison that's all! We aren't all buying and building PCs every year or following the tech news 24/7

What is the benchmark for your Dell and the Vytru? 🤔 Yeah, I saw Mini PCs with the N100 costing 150, sometimes less - but with very plasticky cases. EVERY design choice (number of ports, type of cooling, if there is metal shielding or not…) influences the price of these little machines and they will roughly have the same performance. I liked what I saw inside of the Geekom: how it has metal passive cooling for the SSD, the base is metal and I liked the quality of the VESA mount (it had a very good smooth and yet firm fit when sliding in to the plate). But as the performance is basically the same, when you buy it 25% cheaper, well, you are getting “25% more performance for your buck”. But you see: you got just 64GB SSD for the same price - that to me would be a deal breaker as a general computer (not a problem if you buy it to be a single-task appliance). This Mini PC I didn’t buy (they sent me for reviewing). But I bought the Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse - and I will buy a complete set for myself to use with the Laser Machine (but I will buy the bigger brother: the Air 12 that comes with 16GB Ram and 512GB SSD and it costs like 50 bucks more and it is worth it).

Yeah, you need a different kit. There are kits already for Robot Cars with WiFi cameras and all. But if you need actual speed and really long distances, these kits will be not what you want - going for an RC model with FPV cameras is what you need - it doesn’t need to be an Arduino thing.

That’s cool! Enjoy! The benchmarks are useful to compare different machines - but to me what matters is having a grip on how it feels in practice when I do real tasks. Every person would do different things their computers, so, it’s hard to generalize. Example: I never realize how much Slicing relies on memory. Not having enough RAM will impact a lot in slicing. And if you have a faster RAM chip can be a good edge. Each program will be more influenced by a certain aspect.

Why the VM? Why not installing Linux directly and running Klipper? I am puzzled 🤔

There is a psychological aspect that explains my surprise: I didn’t buy a new machine for 10 years - I bought the best thing I could pay (the iMac i7) and it served me so well (it still does). But of course, it is finally reaching its physical limits (it is starting to crash every few days). So, for auxiliary tasks (slicing, laser cutting), I got pleasantly and honestly surprised with a 200USD machine that provides the same performance (and using a 1/10 of the energy!!!) For my new main computer I really will need a new Mac because to me Final Cut is worth the price of the machine. Now, I am curious about your favorite MiniPC and what are your Linux needs.

@@GeekDetour My favourite one? Got to be Minisforum S100! Not because it is actually a good PC, it's really not, but because it is about the size of a USB hub while having that same N100 processor. This does mean that the thermals are awful and performance will be a lot lower but it is an impressive piece of engineering non the less! 😂 My usual Linux needs in the other hand mainly include running Proxmox (Linux operating system designed to run multiple other operating systems inside it) which I use to host my PiHole (network wide adblocker) and Jellyfin (a personal media server, think of like Netflix, but for stuff you own). I even have one mini PC setup as my router!

We had similar ideas.

Yeah, German! It is quite impressive! Imagine that these tiny boxes can be screwed on the back of the monitor and leave all the desks free. Also, on average the computer uses only 10W!

Wow, you do containers with it? In Linux? Tell me more about the containers and what you do with them!

​@@GeekDetour proxmox is more or less a Linux server interface, you can use Helper-scripts to get the LXC containers running [there is a entire community that makes and maintains these]. For server/commercial use its paid, but if you are a home-user its essentially free [you do get the no-subscription-nag] but there are alternatives to get rid of this nag. Some of my LXC containers include:: Adguard [speaks for itself] wireguard [VPN tunnel] [my router has Wireguard options as well, so not really using this one yet] Dockge [docker with visual interface] [I use it to read out my smart-meter's P1-port, which I previously did with a RPI4, its also tied to Home-assistant, so I have said values in HASS] Metube [youtube downloader] Docker [regular docker without visual interface] 2Fauth [locally run 2FA authenticator] Since the N100 is soo low power, most of the programs I use barely use 5% CPU and 3/16gb of ram. Most of it is just Install-ONCE, then leave it running in the background, unless you need to make some changes You can even run other things in it, like: Octoprint [3d print-server] Home-assistant [docker/vm mode is more limited, and you might have issues with the Zigbee coordinator], so its better to run it standalone for better use. [it also saves troubleshooting proxmox when you have issues] You can even install Linux VM's on it, if your kids want to learn Linux/python code. and since its a VM, it doesn't matter if they kill the system, since its ISOLATED, and easily removed/reverted to a previous state. hope this gives a bit better understanding of Proxmox.

Oh, that’s great! I am so happy the video helped you ❤️ Have a wonderful 2025!

Running Linux on it might be a very good idea for servers or to run Klipper - but I am not so sure if Linux would be so much faster as a Desktop - I’ll explain: it really depends on the drivers supporting all the hardware, specially the GPU, and video decoding AND ENCODING that the N100 has, which I am quite happy to see in this chip. I love Linux, though ❤️

What a great comment! Lots of cool information! You are right: I left a lot of cool stuff out of the video… it would become super long. Not only excellent video decoding by hardware, but also ENCODING! All the video capture while I was using the MiniPC was done on the MiniPC itself and we barely notice any performance difference. Intel did a really great job with this chip 👍 I should have mentioned the display port as well, the fact we can plug two monitors in 4k… or having fullhd at 120Hz… it’s a big list of cool things.

It was a pleasure, really. I was very curious particularly about Fusion 360 - and it works fine! For myself, the Air12 would be even better - but for my daughter, everything she is doing on the Lite works great.

Hi there Scooty. The video was definitely not Stretched out - it was edited to the bones. Videos look stupid when you don't make any.

And more expensive! For the price of a MiniPC + Monitor and Keyboard, I didn't find any equivalent Laptop.

Yeah, 16GB is really recommended. But I wanted to check if 8GB works, and it does indeed. I might change the RAM Stick eventually, and put 16GB.

To me, slicing seemed the hardest task with 8GB of RAM - I thing the processing is very memory intensive

Alright… so, stay dry 🤣

@@GeekDetour how did my comment end up here lol?

I don’t know man! I didn’t understand the comment at all - who has 10 horses? Why would they want you in a tank!? I understand you trying to resist getting into a tank when 10 horses are insisting on that - I wouldn’t trust them! They are into something suspicious 🤨

It all makes sense, I swear. I watched commented this on a five part technical presentations about how tank crew members may perish. While it turns out that tanks are intended to protect those inside they can turn into deadly environments quickly. So much so, that If I ever were to be drafted, I would not want to be near an armored vehicle let alone inside of one while it is being shot at. I think the reason why this comment ended up here was because auto play skipped to the next video in my playlist, while I was still typing. The "keine zehn Pferde" is an Idiom. for people or things who dont budge or are stubborn about something. Like a beached ship that even 10 horses wouldnt be able to move. I think the American equivalent would be "wild horses couldn’t drag me away". Happy new years

Actually, it surprised me that Slicing was quite heavy on both CPU and RAM - more than CAD (for not so much complex projects). Lightburn for vector is quite light.

It means I was right to not make the thumbnail placing the MiniPC inside of the 3D Printer - it would have been even more confusing 🤣 Well, not for everything, sure, but size it’s definitely not power, always.

Exactly! It’s my first mini pc and I was reeeeally impressed.

Same, and if you underclock the N100 its energy-usage drops to around 9W total. 12W peaks compared to 9-12W with 15W peaks.

The point entirely! For my CO2 laser machine I don’t need anything faster than this. It’s just perfect 👌 I am pretty sure for CNC machines it’s just the same.

Many things are happening. The company got 2 patents granted in the US and they filed a 3rd continuation of the patent (every time making the patent stronger and broader). This 3rd application was still in evaluation and because of the video the examiners finally looked in the old Stratasys 1995 patent - and it is stalling the approval of this 3rd one. Also, the company filed a patent in Europe - and many people added 3rd party observations, so, it is possible that the patent in Europe will not be approved in the same way (at least not for the Hexagonal patterns). All of this deserves a video - it’s coming soon. The patent videos take a lot of time to do properly in an interesting way.

Don’t know. Maybe. I don’t have one.

What?

@@GeekDetour did u say

Sim! É nóis 🇧🇷

I don’t underst… Ohhh 🫢

If you can follow instructions from a PDF, the Elegoo Kit comes with more modules and components for you to tinker with - and it is cheaper. Go to the Elegoo Website, Support and find the downloads for Arduino Kits (STEM KITS). You can check the lessons from the PDFs before you even buy the kit.

Hi there! Yeah, I completely moved from making Apple content and now I am into 3D Printing, Arduinos and Maker tools. I need to give more attention to Arduinos - 3D Printing takes most of my attention.