Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The concept of a full blown windows 8 computer living quietly tucked behind my tv was an exciting prospect for me. I followed this product essentially since its announcement and bought one a few days after they began selling them. I Already had a all in one media keyboard that I purchased with this computer in mind: The Logitech k400. I'd recommend this as an option as the on board Bluetooth has gotten some harsh reviews and the Logitech keyboard is both cheap and reliable with its dedicated dongle. I am going to start with why I only gave it 4 stars - divided into 2 parts. First Gripe- It comes with a 64-bit processor but has a 32 bit operating system. This one has me scratching my head. I mean I get it. This thing is cheap but why not unleash the extra power? The only answer I can come up with is perhaps there were thermal issues when the 64 bit OS was installed - and when the processor was pegged. Perhaps the cooling system couldn't handle it. I'd love for Intel to weigh in on the particulars on this. I can feel that the processor is being held back with this architecture when using the machine. I've toyed with the idea of trying to install a fresh copy of windows 8.1 in the 64 bit flavor - but I hesitate to do so and I will get into why in a moment. If anyone has successfully installed a 64 bit windows OS please leave a comment. Second Gripe- The OS itself. I really like to use a few of the metro apps for windows- namely Netflix and MLB.tv to name a few and this little guy is going to serve out most of his life streaming media. I was irritated to discover that ANY metro app I tried to launch would almost instantly crash. after doing some research I found that Intel has cooked up a patch to remedy the software problem. It was the most OCD software patch I have ever encountered in my years in IT. If it was not run as an administrator - it would go through then entire 10 minute process leading you to believe that it had done its job only to have failed to fix the problem. If you have a bluetooth keyboard or mouse plugged in or in my case a dongle attached the same 10 minute process with no results. So I had to dig up a wired keyboard to run the patch. This was really half baked software and it was irritating to me to have to spend as much time as I did just to get the computer to do something it should have done right out of the box. Mind you I troubleshoot things for a living and this was an irritating and somewhat time consuming process - for the "not computer people" I can imagine that it would have been tenfold more irritating - and most other people would have given up and returned the thing. I can overlook small bugs that are fixed overtime - but something that is at the core of the OS like metro apps not working is just plain poor development. another smaller gripe is the wifi radio in this thing. It gets very poor wifi reception in areas that my iphone has full signal strength - and other apple and windows computers have full signal strength - this thing has 2-3 bars. Perhaps some new firmware Intel? Wifi is kind of vital in a machine that doesn't have an Ethernet port. also - I have a 50mbps internet connection at home and this thing struggles to stream 1080p on youtube. Diving a little deeper - with youtube running the CPU was pegged at 98% and the video would stutter from time to time. This could be remedied with a 64 bit operating system I think. I may try installing a 64 bit OS later today if I feel brave enough. What I like: The price. I got mine on sale from microcenter for 139 dollars. A machine with these specs in this form factor with an OS pre-installed doesn't really exist from a reputable company. Considering that windows charges 119 dollars for windows 8.1... its a pretty amazing price. I have yet to spend as much time testing this thing as i'd like so this review will be updated as I have things to add. I realize that I am riding the bleeding edge wave here with this computer and Intel may need a little time to patch things up more but I wanted to get my initial concerns out there. I was really on the fence about giving this a 3 or 4 star rating... this could easily slip depending on if I can install a 64 bit OS and intels dedication to solving some of the early issues that customers are having. *Update 1 5/26/15* Poking around a little more I tried internet explorer to play the same youtube video in 1080p and it used around 50% of the CPU but the video was still kinda choppy. I then decided to install firefox and play the same video at the same quality. Looks like for whatever reason firefox plays videos the best. the video was not at all choppy and the cpu stayed around 60-80% So it looks like the other 2 major browsers don't work as well for streaming video. FYI when playing this video I had no other programs or tabs open. I'd recommend doing the same to get decent results in firefox streaming. *Update 2 5-27-15* I found something burried in some of the wifi settings thats seems to have improved the signal strength to a MUCH more acceptable reception. I was getting 2-3 bars in my living room and after the following change I am seeing full strength to 4 bars. First right click on the wireless icon at the bottom right of the desktop- go to "open network and sharing center" then click on "change adapter settings" on the left pane again you will see your wifi connection right click and select "properties" then you will see your the network hardware name which should be "realtech" followed by a whole bunch of numbers and letters. With that selected click on configure and then advanced. Select antenna diversity and select enable and ok. Again this was quite a significant difference for me in terms of reception. Hope this helps someone! *Update 6/4/15* Just did a power test on it with my "kill-a-watt" meter. At idle it uses 5 watts. Under 100 percent cpu load the highest number I saw was 7.6 watts. Just information for those who would find this interesting.