I bought this to use as a bitcoin node, it replaced an old full-size desktop box. It's great to have all that space back and this little box is more powerful than the full size desktop too. It uses the same type of memory and hard drive an recent laptops so, if you're like me, you may already have what you need in your junk box. The first thing I did was update the BIOS, which was as easy as downloading the new BIOS from Intel's website to a USB flash stick and rebooting. I outfitted it with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive. I booted a CentOS GNU/Linux install CD from a USB DVD drive and installed CentOS without any problems at all. It's now sitting up on an out-of-the way shelf, happily serving the bitcoin block chain to users and miners everywhere and it's quiet enough I don't even notice it running. I liked it so much I'm thinking about replacing my personal Dell desktop with one of the more powerful Intel NUCs sometime soon.