$35 Raspberry Pi has the crown of being world's smallest and cheapest computer, but this seems not to be the case anymore. C.H.I.P. - a brand new entry to the mini-computing scene has already been successfully crowd-funded at kickstarter, the "100% open-source" product features attractive functionality and power for a price-tag of $9 which includes a 1Ghz A13 Allwinner CPU, 512MB of DDR3 RAM, 4GB NAND storage, USB, Micro USB, Video/Audio/MIC Composite, Bluetooth 4.0 and Wifi 802.11B/G/N.

The tiny C.H.I.P. SOC is designed to run Debian Linux including modern desktop GUI apps like LibreOffice, VLC, or the Firefox or Chrome web browsers. Best of all, CHIP runs mainline Linux, which means it’s easier than ever to keep teaching it new tricks without inheriting a pile of kernel patches. Do watch the introduction video shared by MAKE magazine of this exciting new development for maker's community.

The $35 Raspberry Pi Mini-PC originally aimed to be an affordable educational device to learn computing has started a whole new category of enthusiast using the mini-computer under various scenarios from smart electronic projects to desktop computer's and mini-servers.

The all new second generation Raspberry Pi 2 Model B has now available offering 6x more performance then it's predecessor, thanks to an all new 900MHz Quad-Core Armv7 SOC (Single Board Computer) Broadcom BCM2836 coupled with 1GB of RAM. Apart from the CPU and RAM everything remains the same from form factor to connectors like 4 USB ports, 40 GPIO pins, Full HDMI port, Ethernet port, Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video, Camera interface (CSI), Display interface (DSI), Micro SD card slot and VideoCore IV 3D graphics core - which means all the older accessories and software-code can be used with the new Pi.

To make the news even more sweeter, the new Raspberry Pi 2 Model B will cost the same US$35 and will also support an IoT (Internet Of Things) trimmed down version of Microsoft Windows 10. This release of Windows 10 will also be 100% free for the Maker community through the Windows Developer Program for IoT.

HDMI Android and Linux TV sticks are nothing new, but now we have Intel Quad Core powered Windows mini-pcs's as GULEEK i8 which is already on sale and we blogged about it earlier. Intel has also announced their own version of the Mini-PC Stick at CES 2015 as shared below.

The Intel Compute Stick is a new generation device which is a full-featured plug-n-play Desktop computer with a quad-core Intel® Atom™ processor, built-in wireless connectivity, on-board storage, and a micro SD card slot for additional storage. The four inches long, ultra-small, power-efficient device will come pre-installed in two flavors one with Windows 8.1 priced at $150 and other one with Linux priced at $89.

The Intel Compute Stick is planned to be released in March, 2015 but as of now the GULEEK i8 seems a better deal considering the fact that it is powered by same Intel branded CPU, is cheaper (for Windows version), has 3000mAh built-in battery, more connectors, comes with a remote control app for mobile phone and is available to order right now for just $103.

There are tons of TV sticks and mini-pc's with Android and Linux support, but a new breed of Intel Quad-core HDMI mini-pc's have now started to appear supporting a fully-functional Microsoft Windows 8.1 OS.

GULEEK i8 comes powered with an 1.3 GHz Intel Atom Z3735F quad-core processor, 2GB DDR3 RAM, 16GB of storage, a microSD card slot, 2 full-sized USB ports, a micro USB port (for charging), a micro HDMI port, a headset jack, microphone, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, 3000mAh battery (allowing usage as a portable media player without need of a power adapter), all this in a ultra-slim, light-weight and noise-free fanless design. The Intel powered quad-core CPU coupled with Microsoft Windows 8.1 OS makes this one of the best setup for a home entertainment system supporting hardware video decoding (Intel HD Graphic(Gen7)) with full codec support unlike it's Android and Linux counterparts, just plug this on any screen via HDMI and you have a fully-functional desktop computer with Windows 8.1 OS.

You can also use this as an headless system, the mini-pc comes with an Android app supporting remote login and interaction with the GULEEK i8 without requiring a keyboard and mouse.

One of the first thing any advanced user should do after installing Android on their mini-pc is to install an SSH Server to enable remote-access from a computer for faster and easier tweaking, one can simply opt for an free SSH Server app from Google Play like SSHelper for a no frill, click-n-install SSH access to your Android box. However, if you prefer a GUI-less access with FULL-ROOT privileges from both WinSCP and Putty follow the tutorial shard ahead.

One of the biggest advantage of Radxa Rock the quad-core mini-pc over Raspberry Pi is that it supports dual-booting with support for both Linux and Google Android. In last tutorial we configured Samba file-sharing on Ubuntu based Linaro Linux image on the Rock, and today I am going to share an excellent custom Google Android 4.4.2 KitKat ROM for Radxa Rock which works well with everything working out of the box.

If you are thinking why Android when we have a full-desktop OS like Linaro (based on Ubuntu) running on some powerful hardware, then the answer is because Linux still lacks Hardware Acceleration support for Mali-400 GPU on RK3188 based devices like Rock. An experimental Ubuntu Desktop release with OpenGL ES acceleration for Radxa Rock is released but it is still experimental and XBMC still does not work with it. Radxa has also released a preview image of Android 4.4 KitKat but once again it is also half-baked and lacks Root support, luckily we do have an alternative custom Android 4.4 ROM for Radxa ROCK with features like - stock 4.4.0 recovery, CWM 6.0.3.1 recovery, system ext4 support, selinux kernel, ethernet support, init.d support, gameloft compatible, USB-Hub enabled, gamepad compatible (PS2, XBox, …), pre-built kernel modules (cifs, tun, lan, serial, audio), latest hosts, su, su-binary and busybox, Reboot Menu, sEFix, FX Sound, File Manager HD 0root), Google Now and Nova Launcher.