Wanted: urgent shopping advice for NUC-like desktop

[M. Fioretti]

On Tue, Aug 03, 2021 13:25:40 PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
> 
> ... none will help you in the EU now. :-(

Hi Liam, and others who answered on or off list. The real problem is
time. I had already put away the money and some time to explore and
buy a new computer NEXT month, but the crash of this morning almost
forces me to get that new computer quickly enough to finish some heavy
jobs... in time to go on on vacation next week. Under such
constraints, buying in or outside EU makes little difference. A list
member, for example, privately pointed me to a nice board sold by a
german online shop that... ships in 3 weeks.

>From what I have learned today in this and other conversations, in
general my ideal minidesktop would be either an actual NUC (but which
one??) or a Lenovo ThinkCentre, or a Shuttle XPC, because SMALL is
non-negotiable in my soon-to-be remodeled home office. And new ones,
with as much RAM as possible to maximize the probability that they
last a long time, see below.

But I have also realized that, with time being so important, almost
surely I can only choose between whatever Amazon Italy may ship in 2-3
days from now, or whatever of these models:

https://www.mediaworld.it/search/nuc

will be actually be on the shelves of the Mediaworld store 20 minutes
away from my place. So, specific pointers and comments on any of those
Amazon or Mediaworld offers are the most useful in my situation,
because it came without time to study current standards, CPU families
and what not.

> OTOH, if you like your NUC, buy a newer NUC?

I never had an NUC. I DID know about minicomputers of course, but only
really learned what NUC means this morning. The box that died today is
a mini or mid or micro atx bought ~12 years ago. And I'd really like
my next computer to last at least that long, which is a reason to buy
new, probably, isn't it? I have always hated e-waste since well before
the RULE project (20 years ago, oh my). But for many reasons, my own
more viable strategy to minimize it has always been to buy as little
hw as possible, and make it last as long as possible. Which is way I
am so ignorant on today's hardware, and only very lightly displeased
for being so.

Marco