GMKtek Intel N150 Mini PC Setup And Review

GMKtek Intel N150

A while back I bought a GMKtek G3 which I reviewed here.  I put it in the guest room on the TV and it serves up as a Logitechmedia client to a nearby stereo.  Also, I use it as a Police Scanner with an RTL-SDR device.  Lastly, it can be used to stream anything in a browser such as Sling, Netflix, Hulu, etc.   Something happened recently which led me to purchase a new GMKtek Intel N150, G2 Plus Nucbox.

A reader CC’d me on an email to GMKtek.  This person was quite unhappy with their Nucbox.  Now I don’t mind when someone emails me and tells me their harrowing tales but I do mind when adding me to an email implies that I’ll write a bad review about that product for them.   I do so love writing negative reviews but I don’t have anything negative to say about GMKtek.  I contacted GMKtek and told them I had nothing to do with the email and that I didn’t know the person.   The good news is that they told me they’d investigate and try to help the author.  Right after that I have no idea what happened.  GMKtek treated me awesome though.

So while looking at the latest offerings I was kind of shocked to see an Intel N150 with 12 GB of onboard DDR5 RAM, and a 512 GB M.2 2242 SSD with Windows 11 pre-installed.  The price was amazing as well at just less than $150.  By comparison my first PC, a 486SX cost nearly $3000.
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Evolve III Maestro Laptop Review

I was scrolling around some tech sites and saw some discussion on an $80 laptop.  The device in question was an Evolve III Maestro 11.6″ laptop at Micro Center. Sadly, that price is for in store only and there isn’t a Micro Center anywhere near me.  Other outlets sell these, but the going rate seems to be $130 to $140.  While this laptop is appealing at $80 it really isn’t really very enticing at any higher of a price tag than that.

I managed to find one on eBay for about $65 and while it claimed to be used, it was for all intensive purposes a brand new laptop.  It still had the plastic screen protector on it.

Evolve III Maestro

Booted it up and it had a clean, uninstalled copy of Windows 10 on it.   But that’s not what I wanted it for.

I bought this to play around with old OS’s, primarily Haiku.  I’ve been going through a nostalgia phase and a “what might have been” phase.  OS/2 Warp, BeOS, etc. both of which were superior operating systems to Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.

I found a cool installation video for Haiku on this laptop by YouTuber Action Retro.

So I set about to install Haiku on here and lo and behold……..I succeeded.

Haiku on Evolve III

It worked, but with a few caveats.  I must have the version 1 of this laptop as I had audio straight out of the installation.  I’ve heard that later versions of the laptop have no sound driver for Haiku.

The trackpad didn’t work and neither did the onboard WiFi.  Both were resolved by adding USB dongles for a mouse and WiFi.

Sadly that ties up both USB ports on the laptop.
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 GMKtec NucBox G3 Review

I caught a great deal on Amazon for the Intel N100 based GMKtec NucBox G3.  The barebones kit is probably the best way to go at $119.  Guys like me always have sticks of RAM laying around and even NVME SSD’s.

GMKtec NucBox G3 Intel N100

The Intel N100 is a 4 core processor with a Turbo Boost up to 3.40 GHz.  This little box rocks.

The Intel N100 is a low wattage draw  (6 watts) chipset that tops most Celeron and Atom chips at a modest cost.  It is roughly comparable to an Intel N95 chipset.

With the NucBox G3 there are a ton of connectivity options as well.  Best of all is a 2.5 GHz Ethernet Connector.  Toss in some USB connectors and a couple of 4K, 60 Hz HDMI connectors and a 3.5mm microphone / speaker jack and you have a winner.

This is a perfect desktop machine for the kids or for the guest room.  It would be right at home in the camper as well.   It also is an economical platform for supporting that one piece of hardware that is far away from the wired network such as a CNC machine.

I slapped mine in the guest room and am in the process of bookmarking streaming services such as Sling, Netflix, Hulu, and my Plex Media Server.  That essentially is the extent of how we use a Firestick or Roku.  I can’t count the number of times that the Sling app has been non-responsive on Roku, FireTV, and LGTV.  Web steaming always seems to work.  This may be the answer.
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