Why the heck is there no quad core version still?!
The Brix is bigger and it's worse in every way?!
What the heck is going on?
I just saw an Asus 14" i7-36xx QM laptop for 470$.
I don't need a screen or battery, just give me the hardware for a fair price!
In fact I would pay the entire 470$ trading the screen and battery for the small NUC like size. I know the hardware doesn't take up much room.
They switched to Ultrabook processors, so not only are we not getting quad-core, but we now have to use low-voltage (1.35v or less) RAM in the new Haswell NUC's. It's not hard to find, but I question why a desktop that uses 30w max with a 65w power adapter can't use regular memory? But at least they're including the A/C cord with the new ones
I'd say if you need the quad, just get a small laptop, disable sleep mode when the lid is shut, and use that as a flat desktop computer. I'd love to see a NUC with four cores, but I'd also love to see a NUC with a rear analog audio jack. Next generation maybe?
The biggest problem, imo, is that the NUC is expensive. Yes, it's cheap, but no, not really. $299 plus mSATA SSD (zero internal HDD option presently) plus the more expensive laptop-sized RAM,
plus a wireless card, then add in your own OS & whatnot instead of getting it for a bundle price like you do with a laptop. My typical build at work is $1600 with a 240gb SSD (not even the 480!), Windows 7, Office, Adobe, and a pair of monitors. That's more than I would spend on a Dell by far, but I'm also getting an SSD out of the box, a tiny footprint, built-in dual monitor support, ultra-low maintenance, and greatly reduced electrical requirements. Combined with the newer LED monitors, you can get some serious power savings going on!
But yeah, it's pricey to have the niceness, and the cost adds up to the point where it's hard to justify it over a laptop. At work I prefer desktops over virtual desktops & thin clients, so being able to throw in a NUC in place of a Wyse is awesome. It also makes maintenance easier because it takes like 2 minutes to fully assembly a NUC vs. having to swap parts on a full-sized desktop tower, and I can zap a master image via a USB reader pretty fast and not even need to bother with PXE, so rollout is easy. I can typically have someone up in about an hour from receiving a NUC, building it, cloning the master image, setting up the local accounts & email & software, and swapping it onto their desk. Boom.