Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant’s lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows’ user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users.
I just got a cheap minipc to tinker with and it had windows 11. Not bad and unexpected.
First thing I did was wipe and install Ubuntu of course because that’s what I wanted.
I do like Mini PCs, but I kind of wish there was an easy way to get a solid GPU into it. There’s those weird docks but they’re far from standard, and it would be nice if the GPU had a similar form factor, so you could just stack them up like a MiniPC on top of it like an old hi-fi separates system.
Slap a storage box on it as well for some HDDs, baby you got a server going.
Your best bet is to shoot for one with an AMD Ryzen chip, as they have by-far the best iGPU available.
Getting a dedicated GPU into a mini PC is a pretty big ask, but the above will even do moderate gaming tasks. My laptop with a Ryzen iGPU plays Guild Wars 2 just fine, for example.
A self-built Mini-ITX box might also be up your alley, as those can take proper PCI-E graphics cards.