Comment by singpolyma3

16 hours ago

The specs on this thing look pretty great. Which part do you find insufficient?

The CPU is just too underpowered; I'm sure it's fine for basic computery stuff, but building software and running medium/large test suites on it would be far too slow. Also not enough USB ports; I don't want to carry a USB hub with it.

Battery life on it is comparable to the MicroPC 2, but for the netbook form factor, it should really be compared to the Pocket 4. Similar story for the RAM, as well as the odd screen refresh rate.

Minor points: I do also appreciate the Ethernet ports on the GPD devices, and their approach to touchpads (buttons and placement in particular).

I guess my issues basically all boil down to the Minibook X not having enough functionality for the form factor when compared to GPD. That's mostly understandable for the price, but my point is just that if you're willing to fork over some more cash, you can get a whole lot more laptop in the same form factor (Pocket 4) or slightly better specs in a smaller form factor (MicroPC 2), and at least for me, that's the only way I could even have seriously considered these form factors for my work.

(Just to be clear, I have no particular brand loyalty to GPD; they're just the only player in town for high-end netbooks/UMPCs at the moment.)

  • > building software and running medium/large test suites on it would be far too slow

    I'd figured remote development was the only viable workflow for these devices anyway?

    • Depends on what you're doing I suppose? I'm able to work on Zig with both of the devices I mentioned. Of course I'm limiting the test cases to the subset that's actually relevant to the area or target I'm working on. But that would be the case on a beefy full-size laptop too; even there, the full Zig test suite would take many hours and murder the battery in the process.

    • I've done all my dev work on devices much less powerful than this. After all, that's all that existed at the time :)