The $99 phone-sized Kangaroo Windows 10 PC could be the perfect travel companion

Extremely tiny computers fascinate us. The Arduino and Raspberry Pi are the best known, and I’ve personally written about some recent entrants like the $9 CHIP and the powerful Snickerdoodle in recent months. But these newbies won’t ship until 2016. The Kangaroo PC started shipping this week for $99. The Kangaroo company, by the way, is a subsidiary of InFocus, which is well known for its line of projectors.

For $99, you get what appears to be an amazingly feature-rich tiny computer. The Kangaroo is about the same width and length as an iPhone 6s Plus — 3.17 versus 3.07 inches wide, and 6.2 versus 6.23 inches high). And, it is less than twice as thick (0.507 versus 0.29 inches). It is powered by a 2.24GHz Intel Atom X5-Z8500 processor with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of eMMC flash storage. The latter is slower than the solid state drives that you find in higher-end and much more expensive notebooks like the MacBook Air or Surface Pro. Don’t write it off as too slow to use, however. I’ve been test-driving a $200 Acer Cloudbook that uses an eMMC for storage and find it very usable.

The Kangaroo’s base unit has a micro USB port that is only used to charge its internal battery, a microSD slot to allow for additional storage, and a fingerprint reader that works with Windows 10’s Hello biometric login feature. The docking unit — which I included in the overall size specifications above and is part of the $99 package — adds a DC-in for power, an HDMI audio/video port, a USB 2.0 port, and a USB 3.0 port. The Kangaroo also includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 radios. The main unit also has a so-called Action Switch on the case that lets you use VNC to work with the computer in a headless mode.

But, as the late great Steve Jobs used to say, there’s one more thing. Kangaroo provides a free app named OSLinx that lets you use an iPad as its display. It uses a USB-to-lightning cable to connect the two devices. The app’s description says that it also supports gestures and mouse movements on the iPad. This means if you add a USB or Bluetooth keyboard to the mix, you have a complete portable PC that won’t take up much more room than carrying a second smartphone.

I haven’t had an opportunity to test drive the Kangaroo myself. And, it may turn out to have the kind of problems found in the Intel Compute Stick earlier this year. The Compute Stick’s Bluetooth stack didn’t work well with keyboards and mice. And, its available free storage space was quite small (17 to 19 GB). So, we’ll need to see hands-on reviews before we learn if my enthusiasm for it is justified or not.

That said, I stopped carrying a notebook when I travel years ago. But there are times I wished I had a PC handy when working in a hotel room. Since I normally travel with an iPad and Bluetooth keyboard, adding a Kangaroo to my travel gadget bag might be the lightweight inexpensive solution I’ve been waiting for.