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Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket

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241–250 of 299 posts

Re: Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket

#241
post #34

This is cool, but a 5 hour battery life is kind of a dealbreaker for a device I would be very mobile with. The 11 inch macbook air used to get over 11 hours, and netbooks used to get like at least 4 hours.

Can you put a bigger battery into it?

The battery is big enough. Power consumption is what needs to be addressed.

Re: Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket

#243

Are there any devices that fit the bill of an "anti-laptop"? I despise working on tiny ( It seems silly that most of the volume and weight of the device I carry around daily are totally unused, and that most of the tradeoffs it makes are irrelevant to me, but most small desktop machines are either too large or too slow (to meet a price point, presumably?). None that I know of is designed to operate from a single Thun…

My million dollar idea is that I take my keyboard with me. My preferred layout, keycaps, switches, etc. Inside is something like a Ryzen APU, upgradeable / swappable, with an internal battery. It has display outputs and can easily be paired to a tablet or phone for display, perhaps wirelessly, possibly harnessing the display device's processing power as well.

Re: Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket

#244

Are there any devices that fit the bill of an "anti-laptop"? I despise working on tiny ( It seems silly that most of the volume and weight of the device I carry around daily are totally unused, and that most of the tradeoffs it makes are irrelevant to me, but most small desktop machines are either too large or too slow (to meet a price point, presumably?). None that I know of is designed to operate from a single Thun…

People that want this are buying M1 macbooks with broken screens on ebay and simply removing the screen. I'm not sure you could really do this without the battery to make a much smaller size as modern laptops rely on the battery for peak power delivery instead of using a larger power supply.

Re: Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket

#246

Are there any devices that fit the bill of an "anti-laptop"? I despise working on tiny ( It seems silly that most of the volume and weight of the device I carry around daily are totally unused, and that most of the tradeoffs it makes are irrelevant to me, but most small desktop machines are either too large or too slow (to meet a price point, presumably?). None that I know of is designed to operate from a single Thun…

Consider the Lenovo Nano: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/c/desktops/thinkcentre/m-nano-s... I have a couple of the ThinkCentre Nano computers. They are tiny, a fat fit for a pocket, but easily transported if you wanted to. AMD Ryzen processor and plenty of ram with SSD. Still need power though... and I am not crazy about the power connector though (seems too proprietary) but it seems very sturdy at least.

At least the m90n1 model has power-in and video out on the usb-c connector.[1]

[1]https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCe...

Re: Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was amazing at doing.... what? You've just listed a bunch of hardware functionalities without actually saying what you managed to use it for.

All the things you would use a phone for in the early 2010s: * Phone calls * Video calls over XMPP * Text/XMPP messaging * Web browsing * Document editing * Writing and receiving email * Playing music ( it had a built in FM transmitter - how cool was that!) * Setting Alarms * weather widgets * Writing PHP programms * Writing python programms * ssh-ing into servers * gps navigation * take and share pictures * multi-co…

> * Writing PHP programms

> * Writing python programms

Honest question: what is a real world use case for writing PHP or Python programs on a tiny laptop with a 7" display that wouldn't be better served by a 13" laptop. I can't imagine writing code while standing on a train, for example. But more important, I'm having trouble imagining what kind of work situation would require that.

Re: Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket

#249
post #180

I keep looking at similar devices. What I really want is a small lap top machine (but not necessarily a clamshell laptop) that I can keep by my couch. My goal is to be able to write software when an idea pops in my head or ssh into my home gear. I just want an xterm w/ vim and a browser to look up docs. I have a old 2012 HP Elite (?) laptop with a permanent powercord (battery died long ago) for this now, but it’s mas…

I think somewhere on the Pocket Reform site they describe it as a "sofa PC," more comfortable to use than a regular laptop, more capable than an Android phone running Termux.

I had an Averatec N1200, the smallest, lightest netbook made, and it ran OpenBSD without difficulty, so I'd recommend that over FreeBSD. I eventually gave it away because the Atom processor and two gigabytes of RAM and slow SSD became intolerably slow.

The keyboard was also very cramped, so while I still LOVE the idea of tiny PCs and netbooks, I'm not sure they can ever be comfortable enough to use.

Re: Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket

#250

Are there any devices that fit the bill of an "anti-laptop"? I despise working on tiny ( It seems silly that most of the volume and weight of the device I carry around daily are totally unused, and that most of the tradeoffs it makes are irrelevant to me, but most small desktop machines are either too large or too slow (to meet a price point, presumably?). None that I know of is designed to operate from a single Thun…

This may be a weird recommendation but the steam deck may be something to consider if your docks have a usb c connector. It's nearly as powerful as my desktop, and I can't find any laptops/portaPCs with similar specs at that pricepoint.

This is my intended use-case too.
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