[HN Gopher] The Teeniest Tiniest Laptop in the West
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The Teeniest Tiniest Laptop in the West
Author : elorant
Score : 84 points
Date : 2021-01-26 15:51 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thecrow.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (thecrow.uk)
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I want one, but I just bought a M1 MacBook Pro.
|
| I wonder how Linux runs on the P2 Max? Amazing that it only
| weighs 1 pound.
| dddavid wrote:
| It runs Linux beautifully. Absolutely the nicest portable Linux
| machine I've ever owned
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Thanks!
| adembudak wrote:
| Carrying those things on your back pocket is cool and all...
| until you sit. I had broken 2 ebook reader in this way.
| nivenkos wrote:
| I loved the Acer Aspire One. It was perfect for programming on
| the train.
| neartheplain wrote:
| Loved my Aspire One as well. It was my only computer for a
| semester in university. Played YouTube without a hitch, ran old
| 3D games smoothly, and compiled my CompSci assignments just
| fine.
| unknown2374 wrote:
| I started reading the "Performance" section, and after reading
| that he is writing this on Atom, I didn't need to read any
| further.
|
| If it can run atom, it can pretty much anything.
| hartator wrote:
| > NB: This page cotains a single Amazon affiliate link. Clicking
| on it may financially benefit the author
|
| Clicked on his Amazon link just for that.
| [deleted]
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Nice review but I'd like to hear more about how this thing is to
| actually use. How does the keyboard fare etc.. The specs are nice
| and how it performs is decent but the real tradeoffs here aren't
| in the specs.
|
| Though I suppose most people buying these will dock it most of
| the time.
|
| I think personally I'd prefer an ultralight 11" with an excellent
| keyboard. Like a Thinkpad X270 but much thinner and lighter.
| Below that the keyboard starts getting smallish.
| ungruntled wrote:
| I have GPD P2 Max, the keyboard is ok for typing letters, but
| punctuation requires special key combos, and symbols used in
| programming like brackets underscores, commas, plus, equals,
| etc also have unusual key combos. I've been unable to use it
| for any meaningful programming work.
|
| The fan is also loud even on quiet mode settings. You need to
| underclock it to reduce fan speed to what my opinion is
| comfortable for working in a quiet room.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Reminds me of the time I put Arch on an Asus netbook and then
| didn't have any use for that, because it was too small and had an
| anemic Atom CPU.
|
| Currently my performance and portability needs converge on a M1
| MacBook Air, but I kinda wish i was doing on site support for
| embedded stuff or something, so I could just run around a
| building and be able to whip this bad boy out with an 80s-movie
| sound effect.
| hexo wrote:
| "The screen itself is a work of wonder. At 8.9 inches, it can
| support resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600 px. That's insane. No-
| one on Earth has eyesight good enough to comfortably read text
| that small for an extended period. Yes, it's just about do-able,
| and the text itself is perfectly formed, but eyestrain will
| quickly become an issue. After spending an evening at 1920 x 180,
| I eventually set it to an easy 1440 x 900 px."
|
| Well, why using non-native resolution and cripple your
| experience? I'd say it's better to use scaling or just change
| font size. And one remark, it would be awesome if OS and GUI
| toolkit manufacturers started to correctly support DPI already,
| none of my screens is 96 DPI.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| [?](25602 + 16002) / 8.9, that's 339dpi, waaaaay too much for
| 1x use.
|
| 1920x1200 is 1.33x, 254ppi, still waaay too fine.
|
| 1440x900 is 1.78x, 191ppi, still way too fine.
|
| I'd think 1280x800, 2x, 170ppi, is probably about right for a
| laptop like this, though it's still likely to be a bit on the
| too-fine scale so that I'd give 1024x640, 2.5x, 136ppi, a try
| also.
|
| I think I did a bit of fractional scaling on Linux a few years
| back and it went fine, but I'm not quite sure--my memory's
| fuzzy on the point, I might have just tweaked the dpi that I
| told X.org (to reflect reality) and not adjusted anything else.
| But certainly Windows handles all scaling, including
| fractional, pretty much perfectly.
| whelming_wave wrote:
| Issues with Linux graphical toolkits, perhaps? I hear they're
| reasonably consistent with all screens at the same integer
| scaling ratio but have issues with other setups. Admittedly, I
| haven't looked into this myself in years.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| KDE scales pretty well for me! Even non integer.
| fsiefken wrote:
| So what is the tiniest Intel based device that can be connected
| to an eGPU through Thunderbolt casing with an Nvidia 307 so I can
| SteamVR?
| easton wrote:
| The GPD Win can connect to an eGPU over Thunderbolt. It's about
| the same size as the one in the article.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/gpdwin/comments/ith6wk/vr_using_an_...
| cjdell wrote:
| Ahhh the Psion 3a. My dad had one of these and used it everyday
| for 20 years. Ran for weeks on 2 AA batteries and took it with
| him everywhere (smaller than a wallet).
|
| I learned to code in OPL on the Psion 3 which he passed down to
| me after he got the 3a. Ah memories. Does a modern equivalent
| exist?
| cnlevy wrote:
| I had the Psion Revo+, 16Mb RAM, and went from programming in
| OPL to Java 1.1, using the eshell.exe to run javac.
|
| http://cd.textfiles.com/psion/disk2/PRO_0006/JAVA/COM_0002.H...
| fmajid wrote:
| https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/devices
| cjdell wrote:
| Would love to see a device like the Gemini with a specially
| designed OS rather than a tweaked Android or Linux UI. Still
| cool though.
| moistbar wrote:
| I think having a known system running a custom UI is the
| way to go, personally. You get the benefits of years of
| engineering research while still getting to have a
| differentiating factor that users can see.
| oxw wrote:
| archive.org mirror
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210126173020/https://thecrow.u...
| causality0 wrote:
| The thing I don't understand about the P2 Max and every other
| micro laptop currently on the market is why they shun the
| trackpoint. Now, at least the P2 Max comes with a touchpad.
| Others like the Mix A1 rely on an optical touchpoint, which is
| the worst pointing device ever conceived by the human mind. A
| boiled egg mounted into a trackball mouse would be more pleasant
| to use than an optical touchpoint.
| buran77 wrote:
| The trackpoint most likely adds more to the thickness of the
| keyboard assembly than a touchpad. So in that neverending quest
| for the razorblade laptop thickness is shaved all around.
|
| They're also an extra expense very few people care about. Most
| people who grew up with a touchpad hate the trackpoint
| experience and wouldn't use it for free, let alone pay for it
| or have it as only option. I own IBM and more recently Lenovo
| laptops because they still come with that red nub and I
| instinctively use it but I can understand why manufacturers
| don't bother including one given how little the market cares
| for them.
|
| But the laptop still needs the space there in order to have a
| decent form factor. If anything it would need _more_ space
| under the keyboard to have an even better 4:3 aspect ratio.
| fencepost wrote:
| I used trackpoints for years on Toshiba and Lenovo laptops,
| but had moved away from them until I recently replaced one
| with a cup-style cap. Holy smokes what a difference. Now on
| that laptop I find myself jumping from the touchpad to the
| trackpoint.
|
| So, if you're not so thrilled with pointing sticks as you
| once were, try a few different styles. Maybe you just have
| bad caps.
| lqet wrote:
| This is the main reason why I will stick to my modded Thinkpad
| X61 [0]. Small, classic trackpoint, no touchpad.
|
| [0] https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/
| mizzack wrote:
| I dusted off my X61 this past week. Repasted, threw a cheap
| SSD in, and newer mPCIE Wifi card. After playing around with
| undervolting and fan control it idles silently. Battery life
| on the 6 cell is 5-6 hours light use.
|
| It was a pretty amazing package for that sort of power in
| 2007, and it's still a joy to use -- especially with modern
| improvements.
|
| Now if I could just find a nice SXGA+ screen...
| lqet wrote:
| > Now if I could just find a nice SXGA+ screen...
|
| Took me a few months to find one on eBay, a replacement
| part of a X61s. _Fitting_ this thing into the X61 was...
| interesting. It involved a few hours of Dremeling. I am
| convinced it was poor luck I didn 't break it.
| maliker wrote:
| I think we're only a couple years away from having highly
| productive computers with us all the time, but I think it's going
| to come through head mounted displays. There's been positive
| reports on the nreal[1] glasses user experience, and
| immersedvr[2] seems to have made a lot of progress in working in
| VR (on an oculus quest).
|
| The usable screen sizes in these head mounted interfaces can
| already beat laptops, and I suspect someone will be able to solve
| the input problem with a new portable keyboard/mouse.
|
| Cyberspace here we come!
|
| [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/nreal-light-mixed-
| reality-g... [2] https://blog.immersed.team/working-in-vr-8-hrs-
| day-e8308b679...
| PAPPPmAc wrote:
| I love the idea of the "pocket workstation," and I've never been
| as happy with a mobile device as I was with my n810, which was
| sort of the missing link between the UMPC and Smartphone (ran
| Linux with some mobile affordances, slider keyboard that was
| comfortable for thumb typing), and I want to have that again...
| but every time I look I don't think these mini laptops quite make
| it in to the niche.
|
| I have my little 12" carryin' around laptop that has a decent
| keyboard for touch-typing and an OS that does what I ask of it,
| but I need to have a bag to carry and a surface or seat to use,
| and my smartphone that fits in a pocket and I can use on the go,
| but whose human I/O and coercive environment make me rage most of
| the time I try to do anything nontrivial on it. These mini-
| laptops are a little too big to pocket comfortably, and a little
| too small to operate comfortably.
|
| ... The Gibsonian cyberdeck of the Sprawl books had HMDs and
| gloves or straight up neural interfaces because it was obvious by
| the mid 90s that the problem was the human interface.
|
| I want to see some innovation on that front. HMDs (both immersive
| and non-intrusive) that are comfortable for text. Software that
| works with e-ink displays (or even just wide-spread support for
| pgup/pgdn events to paginate and scroll without a bunch of
| unnecessary refreshes - lookin' at you Android). Key-gloves or
| Chorders you can use clipped to a pants pocket or wrapped around
| the back/edges of a handheld device. Hell, just going back to
| decent thumb-able keyboards integrated so you can hold and use
| them. These aren't new ideas, just once that need to be refined
| into something serviceable.
|
| Get away from the fondleslab appliance that uses half of its
| expensive, power-hungry touchscreen to present an awkward gimped
| keyboard that only works as well as its prediction estimates and
| re-flows your content as it pops in and out paradigm, and improve
| on the "srs bsns computer" for the era of miniaturization.
| m34 wrote:
| "Don't have a proper use case for an ultra portable rn but having
| a large fresnel lens sheet fixture in front of it would really
| make for an awesome coffee shop coding experience." - S. Lowry
| fmajid wrote:
| I had one, running Linux. Gave it away to the OpenBSD project.
| The screen is just too small to be useful. The 12" MacBook, while
| equally anemic, is far more usable. Hopefully they make future M1
| MacBooks that are lighter, the M1 MacBook Air is significantly
| heavier than the 12" MacBook.
|
| I also have a Planet Gemini, the spiritual successor to the Psion
| 5, that I still have but to be frank almost never use. That would
| be a much better candidate for tiniest laptop in the West (it
| ships with Android but you can install Linux).
|
| I've had a bunch of other similar ultra-compact computers with
| keyboards, from the Cambridge Z88 to the HP95LX and 200LX, Sony
| Clie UX50 and Nokia E62 and N800. The reality never matches the
| dream.
| samatman wrote:
| My fantasy is bringing back the 11" MacBook Air, which was just
| a better computer than the 12" MacBook. The latter gave us the
| damnable butterfly keyboard, so that might just be resentment
| on my part.
| trizic wrote:
| Completely agree. The fantasy/dream is productivity on the go.
| But in reality we are productive full size keyboard. Not that
| you can never become productive on one of these devices but it
| will take a certain amount of time and one should consider the
| availability/discontinuation of these devices since they are so
| niche.
|
| That being said, I am still going to order a PinePhone with the
| hope that the Psion-like keyboard will make me productive :D
| megablast wrote:
| The psion organiser would last for months on its tiny batteries.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| That form factor running clean, stock Android with cellular
| connection, phone calls and all.
|
| Graphic linux running alongside with simple hotkey screen switch.
| Linux doesn't have to be integrated with Android at all other
| than being provided cellular data and access to the I/O devices.
|
| That way you get the best of both worlds. Android apps, but with
| a real keyboard for all that text input. And push a button and
| you have an always on, always interconnected pocket Linux
| machine. This respects that 99% of the use would be as a bulky
| smartphone, but when it comes to that 1% - which for me mostly
| translates to ssh-ing somewhere, be it via Termux or Connectbot -
| that keyboard sure would be handy.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| Nokia E7 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_E7-00), was a
| rather short-lived phone/mini-computer. It had a reasonable
| qwerty keyboard, touch-screen, even HDMI output.
|
| If only it could run Linux and had a better battery, it would be
| a nice terminal in a pocket. Even under SymbianOS it could run
| SSH term in an app, enough for quick checks and fixes.
| bberenberg wrote:
| This is exactly the kind of thing where I've grown up enough to
| know that I love the idea of it, but I should never own it. Glad
| to see someone else enjoying it so much.
| krupan wrote:
| Well said! I remember excitedly buying the OLPC laptop and
| trying so hard to find ways to make it useful. Same with the
| first Raspberry pi. This gives me similar vibes.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| I am an admitted SBC addict.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| What does SBC mean?
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Single-board computer, basically Raspberry Pi like
| devices.
| guenthert wrote:
| Yeah, no idea how that term became so widespread. Every
| laptop, home computer and all-in-one computer and many
| PCs use exactly a single PCB. I've seen the more
| descriptive term "open frame computer" used by a local
| dealer. That might just be legalese though to get them
| out of any FCC responsibilities.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| While I love the idea of an ultra portable performant laptop. I
| can't use anything other than an ergonomic keyboard for more than
| a few hours before my wrists start to kill.
|
| I'd love someone to release a 14"-15" ultrathin with an ergonomic
| keyboard!
| krapp wrote:
| This led me to dust off my old EEE-PC 701 that's currently
| running Puppy Linux, and get annoyed again at how Asus destroyed
| the screenspace by adding those two stupid speakers around the
| monitor and put it back in its drawer with the rest of the
| computers I no longer use.
|
| It worked perfectly with Fluxbox, though. I miss Fluxbox, haven't
| found a suitable replacement yet.
|
| But I mean our phones are already more cyberpunk than
| Neuromancer's decks in all but aesthetics.
| krylon wrote:
| > But I mean our phones are already more cyberpunk than
| Neuromancer's decks in all but aesthetics.
|
| They still don't have the neural interface. Although, all
| things considered, that might be a feature. I would _really_
| hate for some piece of ransomware to scramble my childhood
| memories...
| mcbuilder wrote:
| I remember my old EEE-PC 701: it got me into Linux, taught me
| about thin clients, and I've never really looked back. When I
| moved to the UK to start graduate school I purchased a huge 17
| inch Dell Inspiron. After being dumb enough to loose my bus
| pass in under a month, I started walking the hour to campus
| everyday. Pretty soon that beast of a laptop seemed like a
| pretty bad idea, so I sold it for the EEE-PC and an early e-ink
| device, the iRex iLliad.
|
| When I learned you could just ssh into beefy servers and use
| those for compute, it basically taught me CLI as well as remote
| editing. Pretty soon I was distro-hopping on the EEE until I
| found Arch Linux and then I settled on that. I eventually
| upgraded to a X31 ThinkPad when I grew tired of the microscopic
| screen, but without the EEE forcing me to think about a
| different way to do things I doubt I would have picked up many
| of my current skills. I even went so far as to install Linux on
| my Game Boy Advance and used that to check websites and emails
| on a backpacking trip across Europe.
| soneil wrote:
| I had a GPD MicroPC. I fell in love with the idea of having
| something with a real serial port I can sling in my bag. Terrible
| "typing" experience (you type with two thumbs), but it did what
| it claimed, for a while.
|
| 9 months later, my battery life was down to less than 1 second on
| battery. Not impressed.
| qchris wrote:
| Is the battery user-replaceable on one of those? I'd taken a
| look, as I sometimes work with serial devices in weird places,
| but if the battery is a little suspect and I might run it down,
| it's probably harder to justify the price if I can't swap the
| battery out eventually.
| soneil wrote:
| It is replaceable, just one of those silver foil + gold tape
| packages you see everywhere - but with a funky connector. It
| seems readily available, I'm just hesitant to throw good
| money after bad.
| qchris wrote:
| Okay, good to know! I could probably figure out the
| connector myself, but if it was some kind of space-saving
| soldered connection, etc. I don't think that would
| particularly fun to mess around with.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Replaceable in the same sense as iPhone batteries are user
| serviceable, yes, and apparently battery over-discharging is
| a known issue as well from a quick Google search.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I would really like more competition for GPD2 and One
| Mix[1](another HK company) from traditional laptop makers. But I
| understand their reasoning for not doing that, I think they're
| hesitant to compete in small display market where smartphones
| rule; but that's exactly why I want a pocket computer from
| reputed brand - _to ditch my smartphone_.
|
| While we wait for Linux smartphones to get better, a pocketable
| Linux computer as showcased in OT could fill-in the need gap. Use
| a data dongle for Internet/Calls on-demand on the move and have
| full-fledged computer at hand.
|
| I've been telling this for years now, RPi CM4 gives me some hope.
| Looks like Lenovo-NEC might enter this market at least in Japan
| and I hope nerds in Japan buy it out and make pocket computers a
| thing again for rest of the world too.
|
| [1]https://1netbook.com/onemix/
|
| [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjkpqOn6EJ4
| ryukafalz wrote:
| I'm holding out for an equivalent of the One Mix Yoga with LTE
| support. The combination of small convertible tablet, keyboard
| (albeit a small one), USB-C for docking when at home, and
| mobile data/calls sounds pretty ideal.
|
| The Lavie Mini looks pretty great too, haven't seen any signs
| that it'll have LTE though.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| TL;DR
|
| This is an add for an affiliate link to amazon for the GPD2
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