Chuwi Minibook X: the netbook we deserve(tylercipriani.com) |
Chuwi Minibook X: the netbook we deserve(tylercipriani.com) |
Or really buy any laptop rated highly by Dave2D or other reviewers that's 4 to 5 years old.
I bought a tablet from this brand few years back. Screen edges were non responsive to touch within months.
I will note that I also had the screen rotation issue described in the post, but it was easy to solve at the desktop environment level in COSMIC. I didn’t bother dealing with it elsewhere because I honestly don’t mind if the grub menu is sideways.
They're sometimes an odd size, but when I hit the wrong key due to a sizing constraint, I don't even have to think: Backspace, hit the right key with mildly adjusted positioning.
I've tried a few machines with different layouts, and that's never the case - and having to stop and look at the keyboard to find a key interrupts flow in the worst kind of way.
https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/2014/10/03/9f923860-4b47-11e4-b6...
Lots of 15.6" Windows laptops come with 1080p screen which is painful to look at.
Nowadays it’s probably a performance / battery saving “feature” attempt.
I think my desire for this kind of product is something lighter, but this set of notes on the Chuwi feels like the compromises GPD gives you but with less power.
I had no idea other vendors like Chuwi were providing netbook like devices. I will be doing more research tonight. Great post by OP!
They're Android tablets with non-removable keyboards.
The idea of a netbook was very small, cheap, portable, full-featured computer that you could use like a normal computer.
All the ports, your desktop OS, and so on.
Chromebooks ain't it, even if they compete in the market segment that made netbooks a success.
I've done that with mine. Worked great, and now I get around 30 hours of battery life with a lean linux distro, as long as I'm only like reading websites or writing on it.
As a data point: I'm 100% converted personally. A Chromebook is what goes into my backpack and the device I use for all my general day-to-day UI clickery, and it's a better fit for my needs than Windows (not nearly as bad as it used to be but still sort of a PITA to make work as a Linux-focused dev environment) or Linux (not nearly as much of a PITA for a connected consumer network device but still has the occasional wart trying to get something weird to run).
16GB ram is cool though.
PostmarketOS has a small handful of Snapdragon 870, 865 tablets (~5 year old, Cortex-A77). But it feels like it's by hook & by crook. Meanwhile it feels like bootloaders are just getting more and more locked down, making it less interesting whether mainline Linux support developers or not.
So, unusable for blind typing.
920g for a 10" is also crazy much. LG make 14" laptops under a kg.
I want something like the Sony Z4 tablet. About 600g with keyboard dock. Thin, waterproof (not the keyboard), days of standby, 4G supported, the keyboard was excellent.
If it would be possible to run a current version of Android on it, it would be perfect.
I'm a big believer in cheap, small, low-power laptops. For simple tasks, you don't need that much compute.†
But you can't skimp on the keyboard! Especially because, one of the big advantages of a low-power laptop should be for writing!
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† Okay, Electron exists... you shouldn't need all that compute.
It was Japanese, naturally.
At linux.conf.au 2007 we chose a smaller conference bag, designed to carry your electrical accessories and nick-knacks... it turned out to be the perfect size for the new EeePC (and later the MacBook Air 11").
I do have my ASUS EEEPC 701 4G Surf still working. I think it is 18 years old at this point? It is rocking Antix, in its 3.6 GB hard drive. It broke the S key in the keyboard last night and I ordered a replacement.
I use it as writer deck and to ssh to my server and raspberry pi from the sofa.
It is built in a very resistant way? Survived my kid so far.
I don't share the complaints of the OP about the keyboard or the screen, though. The keyboard is fine, I can hit about 110WPM on it, slower than my regular pace, but enough that there's no dramas. The layout is great: Occasionally there's keys that are too small (looking at you, apostrophe) but everything is at least in the right spot, which is way more important.
The 2K display at 10" is high enough DPI that everything is totally crisp, and you can unlock ~95Hz (bad for video, good for everything else) with a bit of a tweak. You can also smash a byte into the EC at the correct offset and access the full unrestricted BIOS -- mostly to crank the RAM up to 4800MT/s.
I'm running vanilla Arch with Niri and Noctalia, and it's a dream. It's my primary dev machine, used in combination with a remote server with a tonne more grunt. If it broke tomorrow, I'd buy another - and I wouldn't do that with my macbook.
To the OP:
* Accelerometer support, EC-byte-bashing to get BIOS unlock: https://github.com/greymouser/minibook-x-tools
* 95Hz EDID fix: https://github.com/sonnyp/linux-minibook-x/issues/7#issuecom...
Getting from zero to a fully working OS was a mild journey, but I'd do it again.
My T14 has even a dedicated slot for a SIM card.
(Note: My estimate on this is purely based on Apple implementing/expanding the use of their own cell modems, which also includes their wifi chip. It seems logical that they would quickly adopt the same chip for wifi in their laptops, thusly getting LTE/5g 'for free'. Definitely no insider knowledge on this)
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/14/photos-of-a-prototype-m...
I think it was a year or two latter I got a Chuwi Lapbook 12.3, which was a great machine. Lovely 3:2 screen off the Surface Pro, again a pretty good Intel small-core set-up, decent ram, ok SSD, all so cheap. Great metal case. Lovely machine, at such a great price. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Chuwi-LapBook-12-3-Celeron-2K-...
When film is converted to 50 Hz TV, the film is sped up 24->25 fps and every frame shown twice. When converted to 60 Hz TV, there is "2:3 pulldown": every even frame is shown twice, every odd thrice. (Actually, both PAL and NTSC have interlaced video modes, with only every other line updated each frame, so as to conserve bandwidth.)
BTW, when 60 Hz computer monitors were introduced in Europe and used in office spaces with fluorescent lights with passive ballasts that flickered at 50 Hz, some sensitive users suffered headaches from using the computer screen for too long. These days, both fluorescent lights and LCD backlights tend to flicker at much higher frequencies that it isn't much of a problem.
[1] generally 24fps because that is culturally what film looks like and people get very weird whenever anyone tries to fuck with it
But actually interlaced content exists too. Each field is independent, there's no frames to speak of.
Early video game systems based on NTSC/PAL ran at 60 fps or 50 fps, but ran off-spec signals to always hit the same half of the display lines (odd or even). 4th gen systems (genesis/mega drive and snes/sfc) had a few games that used interlaced output; later systems had many, running PAL@60Hz became a common option too.
