Stick PC buyer's survival guide - part 1

As of now there are broadly two generations of stick PCs still available in the market.

First generation sticks had a single core Allwinner A10 SoC, so if you see that in the tech specs you can be sure it's a early model. They can still be attractive because of their very low price: around £38, $50. [Despite its name, the Allwinner A10 has an ARM Cortex A8 CPU (which, despite its name, contains an ARMv7 instruction set architecture processor). Unbelievably, this information will actually make things clearer further on... The A10 also incorporates an ARM MALI 400 graphics processor.] These models tend to be a bit on the slow side, sport an older version of Android and can be short of RAM (512k is common). Plus, some of the older models could get a bit hot...

Second generation sticks [that's the current crop] all seem to have gone for the Rockchip RK3066 SoC, which pairs a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 (still ARMv7 architecture) with a quad-core ARM MALI 400 gpu. They also tend to be clocked a little higher. For these reasons, they are a bit faster than the first generation. RAM tends to be standardised at 1 gig, which also helps, and flash memory at 8/16 gig. The second generation units may also have better electrical and thermal charateristics. They run either Android 4.0 or, very lately, 4.1. Perhaps because of the tendency to add features and engineering smarts, these devices cost about half as much again as the first generation ones — £50 to £60, around $75.

You need to know beforehand how you are mostly going to be using your unit: plugged into a TV in your living room, whether primarily as a media centre or primarily as a computer, or plugged into a monitor on a desk. If in a TV in your living room, you are going to need to control it remotely: at the very least an infrared or Bluetooth mouse (an "air mouse"), perhaps also a remote keyboard (you can also get mouse/keyboard combos). If in a monitor, you might be better plugging a USB mouse and USB keyboard into a USB hub and attaching that to the stick.

Be aware that most models will output audio through the TV speakers if attached to a TV; if attached to a monitor without inbuilt speakers, there will be no sound. If you want to use a monitor AND have sound, look for an audio output port on the stick [I don't currently know if they will work with USB speakers].