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I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

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Re: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

#151

Post by russfink »

ytjohn wrote: post #148
gattr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to try this kind of setup (coding from a lounge chair with just a keyboard tray & trackball, yay!), "dumb monitor" would be sufficient - but since switching to high-DPI displays in 2016 I really need this to be 4K.

I did this with nreal air glasses (now xreal air), specifically for coding. Most uses cases for these type of glasses is around media consumption, so I was taking a bit of a leap when doing it for coding/heavy text usage. There are two modes. One is fixed so that the virtual monitor stays in one spot on the lenses. The single virtual monitor stays directly in front of you. The other is floating, which basically keeps…

Thank you for your detailed insights. I was on the fence, now I think I’ll wait.

Re: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

#152

Post by regularfry »

user070223 wrote: post #149
tdeck wrote: post #5

I thought it would be a mini laptop like these: https://gpdstore.net/product-category/gpd-mini-laptop/ But no, he carries around a little Nuc style machine and a full, separate keyboard and charger. It's cool and all, but there's no way this whole jumble would fit in a pocket or be convenient to use on the go.

Truly, it should have been a smartphone, their performant today is better than my 10 years old (totally fine) desktop

You can do this! The XReal Airs will take a signal certainly from Samsung smartphones and a few others. I'm expecting wider compatibility from the One line but we'll see how that shakes out.

The fly in the ointment is battery life. Given only a single USB-C port on the phone and wanting to avoid having to find a hub with Display Port going one way and power the other, the glasses have to get powered from the phone itself.

Also worth pointing out that XReal themselves make a phonelike device for exactly this use case. No idea how good it is though.

Re: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

#153

Post by regularfry »

Hojojo wrote: post #142
regularfry wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first gen XReal glasses are similar in that you need software running on the host to get anything other than dumb monitor mode. With these newer models they've moved a bunch of the functionality into hardware on the glasses themselves, so you get virtual monitor and wider device support out of the box. There are a couple of projects that are trying to get better open source support of the Airs on linux; I've not…

I really liked the new Xreal glasses because of the built-in head tracking. But I was getting a lot of drift over time such that after anywhere between a few minutes and maybe half an hour, the center of the screen wouldn't be straight ahead anymore. Meaning I would need to reset the display location far too often. I ended up returning them because of it.

Oh ick. That's not so good. Hope they can firmware-update their way out of that. It's odd that they've got that problem because my experience with the tracking on the Airs with the desktop software driving it has been pretty much fine.

Re: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

#154

Post by [deleted] »

sathackr wrote: post #30

I've been doing this a few months now with an xreal one and minisforum um790. Same ability to power via usb-C and have other ports available. It's worked very well, the 1920x1080 resoultion of the glasses is pretty clear but I find "anchoring" the screen to be most usable because the edges do get a little blurry, but with the screen anchored you can just "look around" a little to bring them into focus. The biggest dr…

[deleted]

Re: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

#155

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

andybak wrote: post #121
Mortiffer wrote: post #98

Sounds like sponsored content. Every other review I have read people say they go back to laptop because the text fidelity, eye strain and keyboard on lap is just the best productivity setup

I'm over 50 and need reading glasses as well as distance glasses. I actually find working in the Quest 3 better than a laptop in many ways. The balance betweeen (virtual) screen size and focussing distance seems to be easier to balance. With a laptop the distance sweet spot for vision isn't always the same as the comfort sweet spot for posture. I could probably optimize my desk setup to improve this - but the point o…

Do you wear both VR and regular glasses? I'm not sure the VR set can accommodate cylinder and astigmatism of my prescription lenses.

Re: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

#156

Post by xattt »

mojomark wrote: post #24
xattt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the resolution? Can you see the small text of individual items of the Word ribbon?

I don't know the answer to your question specifically, but in general, if someone tells you the resolution in terms of 'X by Y' pixels, that is unuseful information for an AR display. It drives me bananas that this isn't industry standard after all these years. Instead, you need resolution in terms of Pixels Per Degree (PPD). And, to have any hope of viewing legible text on a virtual monitor projected via an AR HUD,…

I didn’t have the vocabulary to see it this way, nor the 35 PPD standard. My experience with headwear is from circa 2016 VR headsets that were running a racing sim, with awful screen door effects.

I realize there’s been a decade of progress. However, seeing random no-name AR glasses and being encouraged to buy them “sight-unseen” by a native content article seems like a recipe for being bamboozled.

Re: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

#157

Post by arend321 »

fsiefken wrote: post #145
arend321 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waiting for the XReal One Pro to vibe code using Aider and Samsung DeX in a Termux terminal while walking my countries national parks (just something I would like to try)

I tried something like that 2 decades ago with a 640x480 monocular strapped to my sunglasses, with interpolation i could use a 1024x768 resolution in combination with a arm based pocketpc with host usb and compactflash video-out. I used it for reading and 'fast' offline wikipedia/tr3 database search with both frogpad and twiddler2 and some voice commands. The problem is that you can see the foreground and depth ok as…

That's so cool, thanks for the detailed reply. I agree walking around with a big bouncy screen in front is probably not going to be very ergonomic. Still I can't let the idea go completely. Going RSVP+TTS might indeed be a more viable approach, certainly something to test with the current wave of AI/LLM agents.

Re: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

#158

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #74

AR glasses brings great accessibility improvements, especially those who are bedridden; I wrote the need-gap for wearable low latency computer displays[1] ~6 years ago when I was in bed recovering from a spinal fusion surgery as the only option available to me were those unwieldy bed mounts for monitors and it requires help from others to adjust the angles. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/16-wearable-low-latency-dis…

I am partially bedridden ... so far mackbook air remoting to my desktop PC looks like the best solution - it's light, sturdy, stays cool, has decent resolution and excellent battery life. The only thing I don't like is non-standard keyboard.

Re: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

#159

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

em-bee wrote: post #105
wordpad wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is having a laptop on your lap or by your side a problem in bed? That's my default wfh setup. I even have a 2nd monitor on a standard arm mounted to my bedrest for when I need it. I do also use Xreal One but only when I'm trying not to wake my partner.

to use a laptop you need to be sitting up. when you are bedridden many times you can't do that. and even healthy, sitting in bed with my legs stretched out is uncomfortable for longer periods of time. not to mention most people would balk at their partner doing that when they share a bed. consider yourself lucky. but do check that you are giving enough attention to your partner otherwise. i have at least one friend w…

Computers are definitely better than wives :)

Re: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses

#160

Post by giantg2 »

The keyboard is the real issue for me. Sure they make the laser protected ones, but they just feel weird (not to mention pricey). Maybe the super thin folding/rolling ones are OK. But why not a phone or a laptop? What use case does this really solve?
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