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I love my GPD Micro PC

blog.danieljanus.pl

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Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#31

Post by olliej »

All of this seems perfectly reasonable, but I take issue with the "walled garden" comment for Macs. It's a true, and legitimate, complaint about iOS. Personally on iOS I find it makes for installing software much less of a concern, but I do understand that other people prefer a different balance.

Macs aren't walled gardens, you're free to install whatever you want, the default security requires that software be signed but does not require the use of the app store, and apple put a _lot_ of work into ensuring that Macs remained secure but could also have whatever non-tacos OS you might want.

I am not sure what more could be done to make a Mac not be a "walled garden".

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#32

Post by Arainach »

cesarb wrote: post #12
idle_zealot wrote: post #3

My concern with a device of this size is typing. How do you use a keyboard barely larger than a credit card? Do you thumb-type, touch type, hunt-and-peck with just your index fingers?

> How do you use a keyboard barely larger than a credit card? If you can use a phone's virtual keyboard, which is even smaller and has no physical separation between the keys, you should be able to use a keyboard like that one. It feels strange at first, but you adjust quickly. (I don't have any experience with that GPD, but I have experience with an old EeePC, which is similar-sized but probably has smaller keys bec…

A phone keyboard supports swiping for words and never requires multiple buttons to be pressed. Tapping on a small target is one thing; trying to hold down a modifier without pressing adjacent keys is something very different.

I am proficient with phone keyboards, but part of that proficiency is almost never using any punctuation, numbers, or symbols that aren't on the primary screen. Once I need anything more specialized (say if I wanted to do any coding) my speed drops by a huge factor.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#33

Post by olliej »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #30

Tangential, but: > I’m very vigilant and still a bit freaked out when I carry the Macbook around. Careful in tight spaces! Better not hop on a city bike with it in my backpack, ’cause what if I fall? I've actually found MacBooks to be impressively sturdy. Perhaps I've been lucky. I've dropped my 2016 Intel MBP once while coming out of my car, it hit the pavement on its corner. There was a little dent in the corner, a…

I agree with you on sturdiness - I thrown one 7 feet onto concrete and it was dented but kept working for years. I think the bigger issue is the mental model of "what if I break it?" being applied to a $300 machine vs a $3000 machine is very different.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#34

Post by olliej »

cesarb wrote: post #12
idle_zealot wrote: post #3

My concern with a device of this size is typing. How do you use a keyboard barely larger than a credit card? Do you thumb-type, touch type, hunt-and-peck with just your index fingers?

> How do you use a keyboard barely larger than a credit card? If you can use a phone's virtual keyboard, which is even smaller and has no physical separation between the keys, you should be able to use a keyboard like that one. It feels strange at first, but you adjust quickly. (I don't have any experience with that GPD, but I have experience with an old EeePC, which is similar-sized but probably has smaller keys bec…

I can hold my phone in one hand, and type with just my thumb, and my thumb covers the full spread of the keyboard. Or I can type with two thumbs for things that are longer than a few words, and again reach the entire keyboard without shifting grip.

But also I don't type much - in fact as little as possible - on my phone, and certainly not code. I will switch to my laptop for anything more than a few words if it's possible.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#35

Post by pdimitar »

> rather than mindlessly reaching for the phone and scrolling through news, I choose to pull out the Micro and read some code.

That's the gem here. I'm looking for ways to stop reaching for my phone. Looking at many people around me I definitely do pretty well but I want even more.

That's why I was looking at various small machines, even some modern reimplementations of LISP machines but nothing caught my eye.

Maybe the GPD machines are it.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#36

Post by em-bee »

i got the GPD pocket 1 with 8GB ram and a 128GB ssd. for comparison i had a 2012 macbook with 4GB ram and 128GB ssd. yes, the mac is snappier, but i always admired the irony of this tiny thing having similar specs. for extra fun i put an apple-logo sticker on it and used them side by side.

the battery died after about 2 years of use. and i could not find a replacement battery, so i got a onemix 1s whose battery died less than a year later. ironically i was then able to replace the gpd pocket battery, but not the onemix battery.

my next device though is going to be the pinephone with its keyboard extension. i found that i only use the pocket when outside when i don't want to carry a real laptop, and that happens rarely enough that an even smaller and much cheaper device should be enough. i still want a device with a keyboard because typing shell commands on a touchscreen is just painful.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#38

Post by georgewsinger »

RE the GDP's portability: I had a One Mix Yoga (similar form factor) a few years ago and also used a bunch for this reason as well:

> It’s ultra-portable. It resides permanently in my waist bag (a.k.a. fanny pack for my American readers) alongside my wallet and phone, and I carry it around everywhere when I’m out and about. It’s super lightweight for a laptop (I hardly feel the extra grams), and reaching for it only takes a second or so, as does putting it away.

Though I'm pretty biased, this makes me excited for the future of VR computing.[1] Obviously headset form factors are larger than the GDP Micro right now, but there's a lot of appeal to being able to strap a device on virtually anywhere you are (in your background, on the couch, on your bed) and being able to make some incremental progress on some problem you're working on.

[1] https://simulavr.com

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#40

Post by xiaomai »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #30

Tangential, but: > I’m very vigilant and still a bit freaked out when I carry the Macbook around. Careful in tight spaces! Better not hop on a city bike with it in my backpack, ’cause what if I fall? I've actually found MacBooks to be impressively sturdy. Perhaps I've been lucky. I've dropped my 2016 Intel MBP once while coming out of my car, it hit the pavement on its corner. There was a little dent in the corner, a…

My MBP fell off my chair (maybe 18"?) onto a wooden floor and the screen shattered. Not sure what it cost my employer to replace that, but I am extremly unimpressed w/ the durability of these things. It was certainly inconvenient for me to have to switch computers for a couple weekswhile mine was being repaired.
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