Stuff like a pretty case with slots for optical drives, a laptop with a shitton of ports and all-day battery life or anything else that seems to go against the trends.
This thread is for complaining about how you can’t find it and (maybe) finding it thanks to someone else.
A proper non-Apple Macbook Air equivalent. Because imo for the average user that just browses the internet and does some light office work it seems perfect. And with that I mean:
- fanless
- good screen preferably 3:2 or 16:10
- long battery life
- unlike the air expandable storage and ideally non soldered ram
- solid build quality
- priced at maybe 600-800€?
- doesn’t have to have the greatest performance
Tbh i thought we would get it with Intels lunar lake processors, but so far no luck.
Honestly this sounds like a Chromebook to me.
Haven’t looked at Chromebooks in a while, but you are right that the use case would be similar.
However I was under the impression that they are mostly competing at a lower price point. So I assume you wouldn’t find nice build quality or screens.
Beyond that I am not really familiar with how chromeOS stacks up nowadays or if it would be trivial to install Linux/windows on them. Especially if they still have EOL dates after which they aren’t updated with software anymore.
A quick search tells me that Google seems to work on a laptop and plans to merge (?) android and chromeOS more.
So overall again products that share some aspects of what the MacBook Air makes attractive, but doesn’t offer the full package.
I have installed Linux on a Chromebook, actually. There’s a really good guide on MrChromeBox.tech
The screen on my Chromebook was fine, at least by my (admittedly somewhat low) standards.
And yes, the have EOL dates, which sucks. It’s why I installed Linux on mine.
I wonder if there is a Linux distro targeted at the average user who just browses the web and needs office software. I guess Mint comes a bit close, but it also has many other apps preinstalled.
Dell XPS 13 Snapdragon seems like it’s trying to compete with the Air.
Sadly doesn’t seem to be fanless, which imo is a really nice feature when you dont care about high performance. Not sure if in the real world you can find good deals on the snapdragon laptops, but list price is also quite high and that keyboard with touch function keys doesn’t seem great either.
So in my book that’s still no match for what a macbook air m1/2 offers, which by now are a few years old and can be found for decent prices. They might be aiming at the same market, but aren’t equal.
Ah, good point!
Phones with smaller screens
the battery thing is real. I basically can not find a laptop with weak/low power cpu and igpu, but a huge battery. I get that we can not do more than 99whr, but for weak stuff, I can not find anything above 50 practically.
well, if you carry around a bag anyways a battery bank could alleviate that
yes, but that is a separate investment
A low power 17 inch or larger laptop in a sub $1K price point. I have big hands (and crap vision) and I use the fuck out of numpad, but i really dont need a gaming GPU or a higher end cpu in a laptop.
If you don’t need much power, you could probably look for something used and get a good deal on a 17" laptop.
A high-quality laptop without any branding.
I’m currently using a 9-year-old, woefully underpowered laptop made by Xiaomi. Full aluminium unibody, and NO logo. Not printed on, not etched in, not glistening only in the right light. NO LOGO.
I’m not a billboard. I’m not responsible for your brand recognition. Ironically though, far more people have come up to me and asked “hey, what laptop is that” than ever would have cared if there was a logo on it.
It also just looks and feels fantastic, all-aluminium-no-logo just looks so sleek.
So yeah. I will not be upgrading until I find another laptop of the same build quality, with no logo. Tuxedo has that option for most of their laptops, but for some reason not for their only current full-aluminium body -.-
Oh, and don’t come at me with stickers.
I’ll extend that to every product as well. I hate branding specially in clothing.
Oh, and don’t come at me with stickers.
Well then. Maybe you could wrap your heart in duc-ta-a-ape! *runs away sobbing*
A media player that isn’t just a modified android tablet in a box with an HDMI output. (And loaded with spyware). And doesn’t require an always-on internet connection.
What about an Android tablet running a custom ROM without GApps flashed, and an adapter for HDMI? There’s a handful of widely sold tablets that also have a decent development scene and are cheap second hand. Check XDA forums for various models before deciding which one to get
Pc with an asrock mobo
A cheap ARM laptop.
Pinebooks have been sold out for ages, and then it’s a massive leap up to MNT Reform or Copilot+.
I just started watching eBay for used Pinebooks, but nothing has popped yet.
Edit: Actually, there are some decent options for Snapdragon 7/8 refurbs on Amazon. Mass market brands can be so hit or miss by model, so this’ll take some research, but it looks like there are 20-30 results to consider.
This is adjacent, but it’s worth pointing out that framework has recently started selling risc-v motherboards for their laptops for adventurous folks.
A IP68 e-ink Linux phone with both wireless charging and induction charging (to charge other devices), no cameras at all, solar panel on the back, usb-4 and headphone jack, 1TB storage , 15’000 mAh battery, two separate WiFi cards (to allow simultaneous hotspot and client use), and finally a radio transiever for both short range comms and long range AM and FM radio.
Technically possible with current technology, but as far as I can tell, completely unavailable in the consumer market.
Price, size and weight are irrelevant for all usecasses of such a product, as far as I’m concerned.
A phone with a 5-5.5" screen. I’d be fine with a midrange chipset and camera. The Zenfone 10 was the last one that even came closer but they would only support it for two years and locked the bootloader (and lied about the unlock service eventually coming back online).
A modern, power-efficient replacement motherboard for the Thinkpad X220/230
Would be absolutely fine if it were just a low-profile SBC that sat in the SATA compartment with some barebones connections out to the ports, keyboard, display, speakers, and battery. It can’t be that crazy of a product. There’s already million super-niche SBCs out there, literally the only hurdles would be interfacing with the proprietary keyboard (a solved problem) and the battery.
A power efficient e-ink laptop.
A laptop with a colossal battery life, I don’t care how chonky it is.
A smart watch that can do much more than the simple crap they do now. Larger is fine, maybe a smart bracer.
Multitools that are specifically designed for trades. It’s not tech, I would just love to have a multitool with specific tools for welding.
Some kind of wrist device where I can copy a file from one electronic device and paste it onto another device with hand gestures.
A Clockwork uConsole device that’s a bit more powerful and can use m.2. Those things are neat little kits, but they’re alway always always sold out of the good version. I wouldn’t mind a laptop in this format.
Cheap large e-ink android screen. Doesn’t need to do anything other than be a consistent, always on display with a long battery life.
They look neat, but way too powerful and expensive, and not big enough. I want a whiteboard size e-ink display with a processor like a potato for like <100 USD
Hmm… The one I’ve seen; hisense for example its non touch, and the monitor is 1500 bucks… I’ve seen a big white board like thing at a local library and some schools, unsure what they are called or how much they cost. A quick search revealed the below but that is crazy expensive. I would then rather get a traditional white board with a marker and then take photos with a phone or camera and store in a hard drive… Not the same I guess…
QuirkLogic Papyr - A large 42-inch E Ink display designed specifically as a digital whiteboard. Priced around $6,000-7,000.
&
RICOH eWhiteboard 4200 - A 42-inch E Ink collaborative whiteboard, similar price range to the QuirkLogic.
what’s “large” and what’s “cheap”?
As I’m getting more and more into keyboards, I’ve realised I dont want a laptop anymore.
I want a powerful phone (16GB RAM, 8-cores) that I can:
- a) use as a phone (smallish, please)
- b) use as a dockable workstation
That is, I can come home from work, slide my phone into a USB-C dock and start typing away on my Linux desktop with my fancy keyboard
I haven’t used a laptop for many years now, I mostly code from an android tablet, into a remote machine. You can find ones with great battery life and keyboards.
Oh wow, I’m always surprised to hear about the coding habits of prolific devs. So you dont use a local IDE? You run termux and the code in vi/emacs on server?
Yep, I’ve coded remotely for many years now.
I used to use vim, but now helix, as my main rust and javascript/typescript IDE. So I mainly use termux+ssh .
Unfortunately for android dev you pretty much have to run android studio, so I use an android VNC client for that.
Don’t quote me on this but I’m quite sure you can run Linux on Samsung phones with termux/prootdistro
Edit: I specifically mentioned Samsung because of their Dex mode but it seems plenty of other phones also allow video out via usb these days. I can’t say for sure they work well with Linux but I do know it’s doable on Samsung.
I remember the Ubuntu Touch had a feature like that that kinda worked, but they never fully commited to it.
As for doing it through Termux, I’m not convinced that X11 works terribly well in Android for it to reliably extend a display to another screen. I’ve never tried though, so I could be we way off
A low power laptop with a massive battery that lasts a week.
A small portable pen plotter or printer that isn’t thermal (thermal print fades)
A 3.5mm-to-Bluetooth adapter that can do simultaneous headphones + mic. I have a device with no Bluetooth, only a 3.5mm TRRS jack (headphones+mic). I want to connect it to a wireless Bluetooth headset but the only adapters I can find won’t do both at the same time, only one or the other.
On top of that, it’d be nice for the Bluetooth spec to roll out a higher bitrate version of HFP, as it’s common 16 kHz monaural configuration is awful when listening to multimedia while on video calls, like for remote watch parties or just listening to music or playing video games while hanging out on discord. I ended up just buying a USB to TRRS adapter with pass through Power Delivery in order to use my Android device with proper AV quality.
