Axgio Windows Mini PC. From China with greetings - atomic kid review

The appearance of this article contributed to the coincidence of two factors: 1) I suddenly ran out of toys; 2) Intel announced the release of its own micro-computer in the HDMI-stick form factor, called (suddenly) - Intel Compute Stick, which was already mentioned in geektimes . It was not possible to get a quick test sample of this kid from Intel, so I decided to look towards the Chinese border, and not in vain.
It turned out that in the Middle Kingdom similar glands are already on sale for everyone. They were represented by two types of devices - "Meegopad T01" and "Axgio Windows Mini PC", and if you could find a few words about the first one at least in the bourgeois reviews, then you couldn’t find anything about the second one. I stopped at the second. The Chinese friends from the TinyDeal store quickly and easily agreed to provide a device that was selling for $ 109 at that time, for which many thanks to them.

Specification of the device ordered:
- Processor: Intel Atom Z3735F
- RAM: 2 GB
- built-in 32GB drive
- two microUSB 2.0 ports (one of which is intended only for powering the device)
- One full-sized USB 2.0 port;
- Wi-Fi 802.11b / g / n;
- Bluetooth 4.0;
- microSD connector
- HDMI connector
OS: Windows 8.1 on board
Size: 9.9 x 3.8 x 1 cm
Weight: 45 grams.


I often order small gadgets on the Chinese Internet, and I have already developed a habit; for the first two weeks after ordering, just forget about it in order to reduce the waiting time. I do not know what went wrong this time, but the notification of the arrival of the parcel came to me after 9 (nine) calendar days, moreover, the delivery was ordered by regular mail at no additional charge.

Inside the yellow mail package was a decent box of cardboard.
In the box it turned out
- the device itself
- power adapter 5V 2A
- microUSB cable
- cover for the device, black color from genuine leather of young dermantin.


Connecting the device to the monitor and power - the process is absolutely uncomplicated.


Onboard there was a pre-installed Win 8.1 (not activated, and without any traces of the license key included). As far as I understand, this is “normal practice” for sellers of this kind of goods, and this fact did not surprise me much.
In fairness, I want to note that the seller’s website now has the same device, $ 10 more expensive, but (as they say) with activated windows. What is the truth in this - I do not know.


The internal drive of the device was divided into 4 partitions - bootable, auxiliary, Win 8.1 itself and the partition for restoring windows from scratch.
The Chinese brothers added some applications to the OS assembly, the purpose of which, without knowing Chinese, I could only guess.
First of all, I decided to rearrange windows to a clean official distribution.
For this, I needed ISO Win 8.1 and a program for recording an image on a flash drive (under Windows, the easiest way to do this is to use Rufus )
Everything was done right on the device, from under the Chinese Windows. In Rufus, when recording an image, it is important not to forget to set the “GPT partition scheme for UEFI computer” mode, otherwise it will not work.
Only 32-bit version of Windows can be installed on the device. Rather, all the component parts of the device work fine with 64-bit OS. Everything except the UEFI bootloader, he understands only the 32-bit loader. On the firmware, manufacturers obviously saved.

Windows gets on the device without any problems and immediately after installation is ready to work. True, the sound will not work, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and almost everything else will not work either. The problem is easily solved by the driver , the search for which left half the evening.
After installing the drivers, the whistle becomes a normal, full-fledged (conditionally, of course) computer.
Next, I put utorrent and, for educational purposes, downloaded several video files with different bitrate. While downloading files, the speed confidently kept at the level of a full load of 100 Mbit Eth. (this is the limit of my internet connection). Neither the Wi-Fi path nor the drive was a narrow link.
Playing video files through VLC also left the most positive impressions. Even a 1080p video stream with a 25Mbit / s bitrate was played without friezes and dropped frames.

The first conclusion: for its intended purpose, the device can and should be used. With the role of the media center, hidden behind the TV, and communicating with the network via Wi-Fi and the keyboard and mouse via Bluetooth - the whistle coped.
The only point is the temperature. With a dense load, the device is very warm, and the built-in temperature sensors show 65 ° C (although it never rose above).

Further, given that for many years neither I nor my family members have used the Windows family OS in their daily lives (and they don’t suffer from it at all), I decided to try hoisting the Ubuntu on the whistle.
And it was here that I ran into a number of problems, which probably will not be in the official whistle of Intel, and in his younger Chinese brother they are present in a large assortment.
So:
The whistle can only boot via UEFI, while it understands only the 32-bit loader, and the 32-bit image of Ubuntu does not know how to boot in this way.
However, there is a solution. In short, you need to take a 64-bit Ubuntu image, write it to the flash drive with the same Rufus (do not forget to set the “GPT partition scheme for UEFI computer”), then take the bootloader and put it in the / BOOT / EFI / directory on the flash drive . After that - you can boot from the flash drive in live mode.
Looking ahead, I want to say that installing Ubuntu on an internal drive without dancing with a tambourine will not work anyway (I'm not saying that it won't work at all).
In short, the key word:

$ apt-get -y remove grub-efi-amd64 $ apt-get -y install grub-efi-ia32 

For inquisitive, but lazy owners of an atomic whistle there is an easier way out:
You can download the finished image , which is compiled on the basis of Ubuntu 14.04 with the mate shell, which can be used in live mode, and installed on the internal drive using the built-in utility “System back”.
Under this link the author of the image describes the process of installing ubuntu on a whistle.
Important:
1. before any actions with the internal drive - save it using the tools you are accustomed to (dd is fine)
2. during the installation of Ubuntu, do not format the / boot partition
Both warnings can be ignored, just in this case you will have to look for the initial image of the whistle, or remain without the ability to load windows from it.

Under Ubuntu, whistle features are more modest. The drivers for the Wi-Fi Bluetooth chip of the RTL8723 are very raw, so Wi-Fi works, but the stability leaves much to be desired, and Bluetooth does not work at all.

At the same time, the video files from the first test are exactly the same, without friezes and frame skipping (although, unlike windows, also without sound), they are played in VLC and in XBMC.

The second conclusion: in the current situation with the drivers as a workplace under Ubuntu you can use the whistle, and as a media center - inconvenient.

Third conclusion: at the moment, for me, this device has become the only carrier in windows. It works as a media content player and is used in cases when “windows is really needed” to open those rare MS Office files that open in the Libre crookedly. In other words - $ 109 reasonable price for such opportunities.

PS At KDPV, the atomic whistle is depicted next to its great-grandfather Intel Pentium 4, solely for understanding the size of the device.
PPS I will be glad to constructive suggestions on what else to put on a whistle, or what else to try on it.