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I think the appeal of the NUC isn't so much the processor power or price point. More that they are a fairly small, light weight box, that could be stuck to the mount, meaning not having to run anything other than power cables to the mount and the NUC, and camera if it requires separate power. The NUC then has shorter cable up to camera for data, to the mount for guiding, and all can be controlled wirelessly via your laptop or desktop. Basically turns your mount into an all-in-one device.
You could use fairly low end processors, as the only thing it has to do it mount control, guide and collect camera data. You can have a very minimal OS on it, keep it very lean. For instance, I run everything from my laptop now... but it also has a lot of other things installed on it... Excel, Word, Photoshop, etc, etc, etc... and all these require space, and usually some memory and processor time for parts that are loaded at boot. Those would not be needed at all in a minimal box that is solely for running the mount/scope/camera setup.
Geoff.
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