Comment by jauntywundrkind
16 hours ago
I got Vaio P many years after the fact and it was so neat. Alas, the PowerVR gpu Intel included on many of the chips there is quite quite problematic for anything but basic use. Although it just saw more work recently! https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-GMA500-Driver-In-2026
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-...
I somehow managed to get it working in 2016 with a lot of hackery, I'd still have it as a usable device if the weird little pouch cells it had didn't die, repacking those batteries seemed like enough of a fire hazard I just didn't bother.
Stuff like this that I’ve really enjoyed has gotten permanent AC or portable power.
Wow. Have to respect someone spending time on the GMA500. It was terrible when new, I recall Ubuntu being barely able to render desktop without lag. Windows was better but still unpleasant. The vaio p’s odd screen aspect ratio was also a challenge.
I’d love to see someone retrofit a modern soc into the vaio p motherboard form factor. There were a few partial efforts on GitHub but seems like Sony’s miniaturisation skills remain undefeated.
Not quite the same thing, but you can build a similar thing to run linux relatively easily, and the keyboards can be really good that way. You can swap out the SBC for one of your choice eg. https://www.lattepanda.com/lattepanda-iota (why don't AMD do small SBCs?) and cut a space on the left/right hand side for a trackpoint/optical trackpad (operate from the side)
https://github.com/penk/penkesu