Intel® NUC Kit NUC5CPYH Mini PCDon’t you love it when p-book fanatics brag about their capacious bookshelves in their big suburban houses?

Many reasons exist to cherish e-books. But space at home or lack of it can be among the major ones. And space can count not just with books but also with computer equipment.

So Intel’s NUC line of compact computers could be of interest if you’re space-short but still would like a good desktop to run Calibre and other e-book-related desktop programs.

I myself own a NUC Kit NUC5i7RYH with a 3.1 Ghz chip; I popped in 16GB of RAM and a 250GB solid state drive. For health-related reasons, I use a large monitor. I wanted to free up as much desktop space as possible without having to reach down to fiddle with a tower computer on the floor.

NUCs are not the very most cost-effective devices. Some would argue that you could instead spring for a laptop or obscure clone. But a basic model, the NUC5CPYH, is on sale right now at Amazon for $137.89, a 36 percent savings.

It’s in the above photo and is all of 4.53 x  x 4.37 x 2 inches.

As is usually the case with NUCs, the price does not include memory or storage or an operating system (you can load anything from Windows 10 to free Ubuntu), and the dual-core Celeron CPU runs at a mere 2.16 Ghz.

But 802.11ac WiFi is built in, along with 4 USB ports. What’s more, Intel says you get 4K support. See an official spec page for more.

The 4K might be a little laggy on movies—I’m just guessing, based on my own experiences—but consider the benefits if you really want to see e-books displayed in style via an econo-desktop.

Caveat: Please read the NUC5CPYH’s reviews carefully to understand the pros and cons. This is not a device for novices, although you hardly need to be a hardcore hacker.

Disclosure: TeleRead buying links for Amazon, in this case. Hey, with or without the affiliate arrangement, I’d have written the same thing.

2 COMMENTS

  1. If you really want to space space (and money) and don’t want to play techie try one of the all-in-one units that have the computer innards (hard drive, usb ports, CD-ROM drive, etc) all installed in the monitor. Our college went to them several years ago and they work very well.

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