If you need a computer that sticks straight out of your monitor’s HDMI port, there’s no shortage of options at the moment. Unfortunately, most of them feature limited specs and storage — but Japanese manufacturer Mouse Computer is trying to raise the bar of what a PC on a stick can be. A new offering from the brand includes 64GB of storage and Windows 8.1 Pro.
That extra storage doesn’t come cheap though, and the Mouse Computer m-Stick MS-NH1 G64G-Pro is priced at 39,800 yen, or about $321 in the U.S. That’s a big jump up from the 32GB version, which cuts cost by only providing half the storage, and taking advantage of Windows 8.1 with Bing. This free version of Windows, offered exclusively to device manufacturers, only requires them to leave the Internet Explorer default search engine set to Bing out of the box, and is otherwise identical to 8.1 Basic.
While a leaked Intel Compute Stick roadmap points to the possibility of 64GB SATA storage in the “Cedar City” release at the end of 2015, so far the largest available storage capacity is 32GB. The Mouse Computer m-Stick isn’t the only 64GB option though, as a few other brands like Innovateck have built beefy stick PCs that carry similar price tags.
For performance, the m-Series are identical to almost every other stick PC on the market. Both the 32GB and 64GB versions are powered by an Intel Atom Z3735F, a quad-core chip with a base clock of 1.33GHz, and pack in 2GB of RAM. The stick PCs are also built with USB 2.0, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a multicard reader.
It’s also worth nothing that if you pick up either of these stick PCs, you’ll be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free once it launches on July 27. Windows 8.1 and 10 Pro cost $199 on their own, so if you need to use that version of the OS for its expanded security options and cloud device management, this is an option to get some hardware for cheap alongside it.
