Its very hard to beat the laptop form factor for productivity, but i wish there was more laptops out there with all the ports and hardware features i would like. too bad that some of them are only really available in obscure cyberdecks
this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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I had one of the original netbooks (Asus EEEPC) back in the mid 2000s and I absolutely loved that thing. It was really great for bopping around college and travelling and such and had a killer battery life of like 8 or 10 hours or something like that. I used to run Win 7 dual booted with Ubuntu
Same had a little acer mini laptop in early 2000s I used it for notes, office apps, etc during college and between the battery life and how much more portable it was than the giant laptop I had at the time it was great, it ran BSD without any fuss too.
I loved my EEEPC. I used while study abroad before smartphones were common. It was great to carry on me at all times. If I needed directions or to check on a website I would sit at a café / restaurant / bar to have a coffee / wine / beer to grab the wifi. It was great and small enough that I could carry it open if needed. I loved it. I thought it was the future until the iPad took over
For awhile now I've been thinking about how nice it would be to have a something like a modern version of the Poqet PC.
The Poqet PC had a much nicer keyboard than the laptop in the article, and between the simplicity of its software and a very aggressive power management strategy (it actually paused the CPU between keystrokes) it could last for weeks to months on two AA batteries.
Imagine a modern device with the same design sensibilities. Instead of an LCD screen you could use e-ink. For both power efficiency, and because the e-ink wouldn't be well suited to full motion video, the user interface could be text/keyboard based (though you could still have it display static images). Instead of the 8088 CPU you could use something like an ARM Cortex M0+, which would give you roughly the same amount of power as a 486 for less than 1/100th the wattage of the 8088. Instead of the AAs you could use sodium ion or lithium titanate cells for their wide temperature range and high cycle life (and although these chemistries have a lower energy density than lithium ion, they'd probably still give you more capacity than the AAs, especially if you used prismatic cells). With such a miniscule power consumption you could keep a device like that charged with a solar panel built into the case.
Such a device would have very little computing power compared to even a smartphone, but it could still be useful for a lot of things. Besides things like text editors or spreadsheets, you could replicate the functionality of the Wiki Reader and the Cybiko (imagine something like the Cybiko with LoRaWAN). You could maybe even keep a copy of Open Street Map on there, though I don't know how computationally expensive parsing its data format and displaying a map segment is.
I don't really see the point in low powered small devices like this, when something like an iPad/Galaxy Tab/eInk tablet is far better suited to the typical tasks you'd use them for.
I fucking hate touch screens personally, and will always prefer a good physical keyboard. Don't like mobile OSs either
The devices you listed are either locked down, or are low powered devices themselves. None of them have a keyboard which is essential for linux.
Being “locked down” is irrelevant for a device used to read and write on. All those devices are also significantly more powerful than this thing.
They all also have keyboard attachments readily available across all sizes and prices.
Linux isn’t at all necessary for the use cases the author talks about. Windows would be massively overkill.
we don't do things because we need to. we do things because we can.
playing doom on a iPod or Zune is completely awful. so why does it exist? because someone willed it into existence. why? because they could.
Aperture Science. We do what we must, because we can. For the good of all of us. Except the ones who are dead.
Science isn't about "why" - it's about "why not?" Why is so much of our science dangerous? Why not marry safe science if you love it so much? In fact, why not invent a special safety door that won't hit you in the butt on the way out, because you are fired! Not you, test subject, you're doing fine. Yes, you. Box. Your stuff. Out the front door. Parking lot. Car. Goodbye.
Not really applicable here though. Can you use a terrible keyboard on an 8" screen? Absolutely. Can you use a much better keyboard on a much better screen the same size or smaller/bigger on preference by using a more common device? Also yes.
you're looking at one aspect in a negative light.
on the flip side to your argument, maybe op travels by train 8 hours a day (4 there 4 back) and they only have one of those tiny little trays as a desk. I'd rather do something unusually instead of doing nothing boringly.
besides, wth have you done that makes your shitty opinion valid in this context?
I wrote a 16 page term paper on a Note 1 on a train while going back and forth to school. I also wrote some crappy android apps on the same phone for school. all on a crappy bluetooth keyboard and a 5.3inch screen. I think that gives me some idea of why such a thing exists.
want to know why I did it?
because:
- I could and so I did
- I had to because I was broke af in college and didn't have a device at home that could do half the shit my phone could
- I had the time on the train so why not use it
so, to put it bluntly, I think it's pretty fucking applicable here.
You have COMPLETELY misread my comments and missed the point.
My point was that there are plenty of other better devices suited to these tasks than a little obscure laptop with a crappy keyboard, such as an iPad or Android tablet or eink tablet, or even a phone. My argument wasn’t “hurr durr doing nothing would be better”.
My opinion is “valid in this context” because I’ve spent countless hours RDPd in to various machines and servers in trains, buses , passenger seats of cars, on the side of the road,etc fixing issues and making changes that saved literal millions of dollars at a time, and the last thing I’ve wanted in those situations was a worse device to do it on simply because it’s “different”.
Mobile Apps really are really lacking in terms of usability. There really is a use case for a real laptop experience
There was a MacBook 12 inch like this that my business partner loved. It would last all day on a charge and he was building our app with it (Xcode and I think clang builds).
This was 10 years ago though.
It looks pretty cute. But holy shit the mouse on that thing looks awful to use.
I can't imagine many people would find this a pleasant device to do any actual work on. Maybe writers on the go, as the author says, though with a dubious keyboard layout even that is questionable.
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Urgh. Why do they always have to ramble about AI?
There was one paragraph about AI. Hardly a ramble.
I appreciated it, since he didn't do a legit stress test. Running a local llm is intensive on the hardware, and if it performs well on that, it'll likely perform well on most standard, non-useless tasks. So, I see that part as a makeshift stress test.
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I remember my 9 inch "netbook." That thing was dope.
I'm down to see this form factor make a comeback, personally.
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I used to travel a lot and didn't need a full sized laptop but did need something more powerful than a phone, this would have been perfect. I might get one anyways for transferring files on the go from my cameras.
It arguable it's not more powerful than a phone, but the keyboard would certainly be useful.
Phones are capable of a lot, but even something basic like a network ping is buried and they prefer you to install some crappy app with adverts and in app purchases, rather than let you use the PC in your pocket.
but even something basic like a network ping is buried
Termux on Android solves a lot of that. But the touchscreen keyboard is definitely a tricky issue.
You all know what would be the most awesome thing for 90% of people? Fully developed Linux Phones + Lapdocks.
- Just one device you carry all the time anyway
- Super powerful phones make more sense
- All data in one place without all sync stuff
- Battery for daaays when docked
- 2 displays
- Super portable setup
Samsung screwed it up with Dex and other companies didn't want to create reasons not to buy more. Luckily devs working on projects like aftermarketOS do not give a fart about such things, and what's currently possible and being worked on is really promising.
Imagine all you need for general computing and light gaming / editing on the go on any display or TV you come across would be a USB-C dock and perhaps a small keyboard & mouse combo. I want that future.
Samsung screwed it up with Dex
What do you mean by this? Dex is pretty awesome.
The only thing that I would miss is contactless payments via my phone.
Depending on their success there might be at least one app that facilitates payments. If not anything else then at least GNU Taler once it gets adopted (obviously talking about not earlier than 2027 right now for any of this).
That would be awesome. With legit Debian VMs and desktop mode coming to Android, I would love to see some serious development progress in that area. But we all know the big tech firms are gonna fuck it all up and neuter it.
There have been several attempts at that and none succeeded.
Ubuntu Touch is somewhat there but also not.
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