alt Hacker NewsI have one of these. It's an awful piece of shit and I love it.
I bought it because I was going on holiday and didn't want to take a real laptop both in case it got stolen and to dissuade me from using it. I ended up using it more than I would have a normal laptop because it's so small and easily carried.
My current use case is for my commute into the office, it easily fits on the microscopic train tables and doesn't add much weight to my bag. Highly recommended.
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My solution for this use case is a used Thinkpad X270. Unreal battery life and adequate performance. Got mine in like-new condition a couple years ago for $90. It's a fine substitute for factory-spec e-waste. Mine has the cheapo screen, but it was a cheap laptop so whatever. I don't get the author's complaint about the "2K" (whatever that is) display. Cheap laptop has a cheap screen, oh the humanity!
Oh man. I have a ThinkPad L14 as my personal, beater, okay to take on the plane to Japan or whatever machine. And I hate it because it's too big. But I'm also hooked on it because it has pretty decent performance, excellent battery life with the third party battery I put in it, acceptable keyboard, acceptable trackpad.
I read this review with mounting excitement until I got to the part about the things he doesn't like. And yeah, those things would drive me up the wall too.
Although it might be fine if that touchy keyboard works well for touch typists. For me, that's everything.
How doeos it compare to the GPD Win mini laptops?
I feel spoiled because the train table on my train of choice fits my 16in Macbook , almost like it was made with the sole purpose of carrying this laptop on it
> It's an awful piece of shit and I love it.
I think, realistically, the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad - would drive me up the wall for any kind of serious use.
But then, if you're travelling on holiday, do you really want serious use? I like your rationale of taking something that's bad enough that you won't want to use it but you have something if you really need it even if it didn't quite work out that way for you.
And, apart from theft, and depending on where I'm travelling, maybe a cheap device that I don't mind the authorities rifling through the storage of wouldn't be such a bad thing. Like I don't necessarily want $RANDOM_CUSTOMS_PERSON_IN_SOME_COUNTRY to have access to my bank statements, account details, or to get into my social media accounts, or whatever.
And it would be nice not to have to worry about any of that stuff if the machine did get stolen (sure, the drive on my main laptop is encrypted, but physical access is always a massive force multiplier when trying to gain access to a system or its contents).