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I love my GPD Micro PC

blog.danieljanus.pl

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Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#61

Post by ryukafalz »

georgewsinger wrote: post #38

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…

I say this as someone who has a Simula One on preorder, but yeah I think the form factor will need to get a lot more compact before I’d use a VR computer on the go in the same way I’d use one of these. Excited to try it out regardless!

It definitely could be though, and not having to have a display that’s physically as large as it looks virtually could be a big advantage. I hope there are FOSS options like Simula when that day comes and we’re not all stuck with the tech giants like we are with smartphones. :)

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#62

Post by VectorLock »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #53

Damn... this looks great for $300! I wanna buy one! Google, amazon, aliexpress... and 666eur was the cheapest I could find :/ Yeah... no.

Yeah when I saw they're $600+ my first thought was "There has got to be cheaper models of this." You can still get Chromebooks for less than this.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#63

Post by TheFreim »

Psyonic wrote: post #18

"Better not hop on a city bike with it in my backpack, ’cause what if I fall?" How often do people fall on bikes? I biked for years in SF with my work laptop and never had an issue.

I bike nearly every day, it's been years since I fell and, if my memory serves me, I fell because I was being a goofball with friends or something along those lines.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#64

Post by avg_dev »

Interesting article.

I never thought I’d see a moving line of poetry on a HN article, least of all one about PC hardware, and yet here I am.

> I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes

I’ve discovered the pleasure of walking around my city since the pandemic started and when the weather is nice it’s a really wonderful thing to do. Even this morning it was lightly misting and still I enjoyed my walk.

> It dual-boots Windows and Linux and is my only x86-64 computer. I like many things about macOS and the Apple ecosystem, but the walled garden of Apple still irks me.

One of my favorite pieces of PC hardware was my 2015 MacBook. It was 12” and had a high resolution screen. It was extremely portable and beautiful to use. And yet, I feel like I agree with the author about the Apple walled garden. It’s not quite BSD and generally all of the software I write is for Linux.

I’m going to be a true heathen: I have been using Ubuntu on the desktop for years and I finally grew tired of it. The experience is just IMO pretty poor as of a couple years ago. But I recently got a Windows PC for work and I use Windows Subsystem for Linux and it’s a real joy to work on so far. Maybe a Micro PC with WSL would give me a bit of a physically portable reminder of what I first loved about programming.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#65

Post by bragr »

My experience with GPD was pretty bad in the past. I had the first generation Pocket, and while on paper it was exactly what I wanted, in practice what I received felt more like a development unit in terms of build quality and the software. It would only run their custom remix of ubuntu and not even that well, and that required a different BIOS flashed than the one for Windows. I tried to live with it for a bit, but eventually the battery catastrophically swelled, damaging the case. Support was practically nonexistent, promised updates never appeared, and they were a bit spammy after trying to push their other devices.

The new devices do seem more refined, and people here in this thread seem happy with their newer devices, and while I'm curious about trying the latest gen, my trust is low.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#66

Post by metadat »

tomcam wrote: post #48
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 too have found the MacBook Air family to be hardy. Have owned probably 20 of them since they came out. Rock solid hardware, modulo a certain butterfly keyboard incident or three.

They've been around for approximately thirteen years, do you really churn through one every 7-9 months?

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#67

Post by Rebelgecko »

em-bee wrote: post #36

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…

I have a Chuwi minibook, similar form factor. I'm on my third battery, which has convinced me to avoid this sort of niche but poorly supported device in the future.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#68

Post by mark_l_watson »

I get it. Reminds me of a friend who used to live in the same little mountain town where I live who was paid full time by IBM to work on Apache Foundation projects. He used a super-cheap netbook and it was the only computer he owned.

I bought a Lenovo Duet Chromebook last year, and for a cheap device I really like it: very small, useable Linux containers for some Common Lisp and Python dev work. Otherwise I have a bunch of expensive Apple gear.

If I had to, I could get by with just my phone and the Duet.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#69

Post by iancmceachern »

gsibble wrote: post #25

At a previous job, I was the engineering manager for a new neo-bank and was on call 24/7 for it. I have a beefy Lenovo P52 that I hated carrying around and leaving in my car lest it get stolen. So I got a GPD Pocket. It fit very well into my back pocket. Not only did it work great for emergency situations (I ran Ubuntu MATE as well) when I needed to SSH into machines, check stuff on Datadog, edit code to make a quick…

Those P52 suck, way too heavy. I insist in a Dell Precision after carrying those P52s around (sometimes 2 at a time) I'm putting my foot down.
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