Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I built my first Cyberdeck

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 70 posts

Re: Show HN: I built my first Cyberdeck

#41

Post by bombcar »

mk_stjames wrote: post #24

I like the slab form factors (One of my first portable computers was a Tandy Model 100) but I cannot understand how someone uses a keyboard that ...doesn't have at least all the letters and numbers and period/backslash/colon etc... especially for programming! I mean I get by reading a bit from the hackaday post that there are combos or 'chords' and so I guess you are meant to memorize these chord claw combinations fo…

Remember how fast people got at texting on feature phones? It's like that, but faster. You just have to train at it; like a stenographer's keyboard.

Anyone who types in a language that uses a lot of non-keyboard characters (think accents, etc) is already used to some of it.

Re: Show HN: I built my first Cyberdeck

#42

Post by bojo »

mk_stjames wrote: post #24

I like the slab form factors (One of my first portable computers was a Tandy Model 100) but I cannot understand how someone uses a keyboard that ...doesn't have at least all the letters and numbers and period/backslash/colon etc... especially for programming! I mean I get by reading a bit from the hackaday post that there are combos or 'chords' and so I guess you are meant to memorize these chord claw combinations fo…

It's just a thing. As a US qwerty layout user I've had to use JP while living in Japan. Got into mechanical keyboards and have used a 60% HHKB, 40% Vortex Core (chords), and now a fully programmable ZSA Moonlander of which no one but me could actually type a large set of special characters on.

Then mix in the emacs, vim, kakoune obsession and, well, fluidity in key memorization is king.

Have tinkered with the dvorak layout or similar but can't really commit because that is actually the one thing where the effort curve takes too long to pay off for me.

I turn 44 this month FWIW.

Re: Show HN: I built my first Cyberdeck

#43

Post by hammyhavoc »

wlesieutre wrote: post #40
criddell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any slabtop’s still being made? All of those that you listed are discontinued. I do like the idea of having a very small, limited OS. I’ve often thought I’d love an updated Psion 5. With modern batteries and displays, you should be able to get months out of a set of batteries or battery charge.

Clockwork makes several https://www.clockworkpi.com/shop https://www.abortretry.fail/p/review-of-the-clockwork-pi-dev... R-01 is particular interesting for having a RISC-V processor

I was so sold on the Clockwork stuff until I realized how small it is. They're more of a handheld thumb board!

If they scaled it up, I'd love one, especially a RISC-V SKU.

Re: Show HN: I built my first Cyberdeck

#44

Post by drBonkers »

wlesieutre wrote: post #40
criddell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any slabtop’s still being made? All of those that you listed are discontinued. I do like the idea of having a very small, limited OS. I’ve often thought I’d love an updated Psion 5. With modern batteries and displays, you should be able to get months out of a set of batteries or battery charge.

Clockwork makes several https://www.clockworkpi.com/shop https://www.abortretry.fail/p/review-of-the-clockwork-pi-dev... R-01 is particular interesting for having a RISC-V processor

Do you know of any with normal sized keys?

Re: Show HN: I built my first Cyberdeck

#45

Post by zokier »

mk_stjames wrote: post #24

I like the slab form factors (One of my first portable computers was a Tandy Model 100) but I cannot understand how someone uses a keyboard that ...doesn't have at least all the letters and numbers and period/backslash/colon etc... especially for programming! I mean I get by reading a bit from the hackaday post that there are combos or 'chords' and so I guess you are meant to memorize these chord claw combinations fo…

The ergo community loves their 40% keyboards. The reasoning is that your fingers can not reach large number of keys anyways without moving the whole hand, and by eliminating the hand/wrist movement you can be more ergonomic even if it leads to more keypresses.

Same thinking can be applied to speed too, hand repositioning and finger-stretching are not fast things to do, so concentrating functionality near home positions allows you to do the keypresses very fast which trades off the number of keypresses.

This all said, I personally haven't used such keyboards, this is more of second hand impressions

Re: Show HN: I built my first Cyberdeck

#46

Post by Gisbitus »

mk_stjames wrote: post #24

I like the slab form factors (One of my first portable computers was a Tandy Model 100) but I cannot understand how someone uses a keyboard that ...doesn't have at least all the letters and numbers and period/backslash/colon etc... especially for programming! I mean I get by reading a bit from the hackaday post that there are combos or 'chords' and so I guess you are meant to memorize these chord claw combinations fo…

I totally see where you’re coming from, and yes, the first few days on it were nightmarish, but I eventually got good on it. I code as fast as I do on my 65%, and not having to ever move your hands away from the main position is actually super comfortable! Chords and tap dancing definitely require a lot of muscle memory, but they are game changers.

Re: Show HN: I built my first Cyberdeck

#48

Post by sublinear »

bombcar wrote: post #41
mk_stjames wrote: post #24

I like the slab form factors (One of my first portable computers was a Tandy Model 100) but I cannot understand how someone uses a keyboard that ...doesn't have at least all the letters and numbers and period/backslash/colon etc... especially for programming! I mean I get by reading a bit from the hackaday post that there are combos or 'chords' and so I guess you are meant to memorize these chord claw combinations fo…

Remember how fast people got at texting on feature phones? It's like that, but faster. You just have to train at it; like a stenographer's keyboard. Anyone who types in a language that uses a lot of non-keyboard characters (think accents, etc) is already used to some of it.

Sounds dumb, but I miss the days of being able to reply to a text without actually pulling my phone out of my pocket. Usually it was something to the effect of a predictive "one sec" or slightly risky "yup" if I thought I already knew how they'd respond.

Thank you for confirming that we didn't type that slow back then. I felt like I was faster on physical keyboards.

Re: Show HN: I built my first Cyberdeck

#49

Post by fho »

mk_stjames wrote: post #24

I like the slab form factors (One of my first portable computers was a Tandy Model 100) but I cannot understand how someone uses a keyboard that ...doesn't have at least all the letters and numbers and period/backslash/colon etc... especially for programming! I mean I get by reading a bit from the hackaday post that there are combos or 'chords' and so I guess you are meant to memorize these chord claw combinations fo…

I tried to get into more ergonomic layouts several times over my lifespan ... I got somewhat proficient in Dvorak and later in Neo2, still have them on "hot dial".

While plain writing was fine with both layouts, what really made them unappealing to me is that I just could not use Vim anymore. A lot of working with Vim is blasting through chains of single button presses that have become second nature to me over the decades. With alternative layouts my text editing just ground to a crawl.

Re: Show HN: I built my first Cyberdeck

#50

Post by rcarmo »

This is pretty neat. As someone who frequently uses an iPad mini with a foldable Bluetooth keyboard (and who is typing this on the on-screen one right now), I like the idea of having a little UNIX machine on the go, and I like the idea of QAZ (I have been looking at QMK and other custom keyboard firmwares for a while).

Right now I use a-Shell and iSH to have surprisingly powerful CLI sandboxes in iOS, but having a normal userland would be great.

Curious about weight and (metric) dimensions, though. Thickness (or lack thereof) is one of the advantages of my current setup.

Post reply on HN