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I love my GPD Micro PC

blog.danieljanus.pl

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Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#101

Post by BoorishBears »

xiaomai wrote: post #40
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.

I mean that's the nature of a unibody machine with edge to edge glass sandwiched in.

The main body is amazingly sturdy. I've crushed mine behind a power seat with enough force to bend the aluminum but the machine kept on bar some faint stuck pixels in the imprint of the keyboard.

But drop it the wrong way and the aluminum lip will give way immediately, and it's no different than if you dropped a thin pane of glass with no protection right on its edge.

For what it is I say the Macbook is very study. It's never going to be a rugged book with the current design, but I haven't had many "ultrabook-style" machines that were as tough as a Macbook.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#102

Post by dhon_ »

hyperpallium2 wrote: post #70

Android tablet + termux + bluetooth keyboard is cheaper, and better performance in some ways... The only problem is Google slowly locking down and squeezing the life out of termux.

I carry a folding bluetooth keyboard when I'm on call and just use my phone to SSH to another system. It's a great setup in a pinch. Decent battery life, built in 4G and close to a full sized keyboard which is much easier for typing than these micro PCs.

I've also used my phone connected to a screen/keyboard/mouse through Samsung Dex and it was a very desktop like experience for my use case. Although it's rare that I'd have the required equipment and not be carrying a full sized laptop.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#103

Post by ajsnigrutin »

aidenn0 wrote: post #83
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.

$534 from Ali express which is about $100 more than the 2021 price of $445. It is going on sale on 8/22 for $417 which is much closer to the price in TFA.

Here, aliexpress automatically adds 22% vat, so it's more :/

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#104

Post by resoluteteeth »

800xl wrote: post #72

This reminds me of why I like cheap little Chromebooks. The cost to utility ratio is amazing for a little over 100 bucks, I don't worry much about the laptop getting damaged or lost, more ports than a MacBook, and a Linux VM is built in.

Yeah I was thinking about buying a gpd mini laptop but I got a dirt cheap 11.6" chromebook instead and while it won't fit in a pocket it's probably much more practical for way less money.

I don't have to worry too much about it getting broken or stolen (I would just immediately buy another), it has a keyboard that's basically full sized, it has great battery life, it charges well enough from even a 20w usb c charger in a pinch, and the android integration that allows initiating wifi tethering from the chromebook rather than having to turn it out from the phone makes it very fast to get stuff done on the go in a pinch.

I would never want to bring my expensive/bigger laptop around if I didn't know I need it but the chromebook is great to take just in case.

Chrome os itself is limited but thanks to crostini it can do anything.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#105

Post by snyhfgb »

epakai wrote: post #17

The Micro PC is a really cool device, but owning one I couldn't really recommend it outside a very small niche. Form factor, ports, and performance are all great. The firmware is very frustrating though. Mine shipped with a newer firmware (4.18) than was available to download, and it was miserable. The machine would power on to blank screens, and have random crashes. I was wary of downgrading because I couldn't put t…

there is a good chance you could try out other firmwares on your micropc. the win and win2 both had read/write capabilities via flashrom. i've done the backup/restore of the firmware on both.

the caveat is you stand a chance of soft bricking your device if you reboot after a failed write operation, or fully bricking your device if you didn't back up your firmware prior to a failed write.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#107

Post by webgoat »

My setup for this is my phone with a B.O.W folding keyboard and chrome remote desktop. I don't have any of the I/O but I can access my main setup from anywhere and don't need to lug around another device that does what my phone can already do.

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#109

Post by dcow »

haolez wrote: post #71
avg_dev wrote: post #64

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 Wi…

Until Microsoft start putting ads and Telemetry in your shiny new WSL environment :) I'm seriously considering not upgrading to Windows 11 and just move back to Linux.

They did that in Windows 11?

Re: I love my GPD Micro PC

#110

Post by dcow »

avg_dev wrote: post #64

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 Wi…

I have a GDP Pocket 3 with WSL. It's supposed to take over my old 3rd gen Thinkpad X1 Carbon, but that thing keeps trekking on. The KVM support is amazing on the Pocket, though. Wish it had the battery life of my M1.
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