I got one of these small computers after seeing it posted here. From the top it's not that big, but it's about 5cm thick and has a nice weight to it. It's a bit like those cyberdeck things floating around, but built to survive a drop.

First impressions, is it any good? It came with windows XP, which was the first warning sign. Trying to install the latest xubuntu failed, because the cpu is 32bit, not 64. It has two cores at 1.33GHz, making it feel rather slow when booting. I'm having some issues with the calibration of the touch screen. It only has one USB port, which means that it needed a hub for a mouse and the installation USB stick. Enough things to complain about.

But it has a nice size. Wifi works. I could still find an older image of xubuntu that installed. And the keyboard works surprisingly well for the size of the buttons. Working in a gui is a bit clunky due to the touchpad issues, but a terminal feels decently snappy. It won't beat a modern laptop, but for me it might be useful for configuring network switches, or server maintenance.

Would I recommend getting one? If you want to get a retrocomputing project, sure, go for it. The limitations won't be that bad and it won't take up that much space. Support for X86 32bit is slowly disappearing though.

If you want that cyberdeck, I'd rather suggest a devterm from clockworkpi, or similar projects. It will give you less trouble, especially with a RPi, and will last for 5+ years.


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