I discovered that (apparently) a few people actually have read this blog before... so I might as well post something.

I guess I can talk about the weird computers I've accumulated recently! This one will be a bit fast-and-loose, so forgive me if I re-write parts of this in the near future.

(This is also my first attempt at using IPFS for image hosting, so bear with me if images are a bit slow to load...)

Pinebook Pro

From PINE64 themselves:

Please do not order the Pinebook Pro if you’re seeking a substitute for your X86 laptop, or are just curious and you’re ordering it with an intent to file a return/refund return request. These pre-orders are meant for enthusiasts familiar with the Arm architecture and interested in the PineBook Pro for this specific reason.

A few bad things:

• The keyboard is serviceable, but not great. Something about the layout doesn't feel quite right, and I just can't type on it as fast as I can on my other laptops.
• The trackpad is awful. Out of the box, it was unusable. It suffered from a perceptible input lag, and precise movements were almost impossible. After an update, it is usable, but not much more than that. I'd recommend carrying around a mouse if possible. I bought a cheap wireless mouse, and disabled the trackpad.
• This laptop may as well not have speakers. They're super quiet and super tinny. Bring your headphones.
• This is not a multimedia machine. In a pinch, you can play music with no issues, but video playback is rough. It can do 1080p playback when playing local files, but that's pushing it. YouTube never went above 480p (in automatic mode). And any type of music production is a no-go (without some tweaks). In the stock configuration, Renoise would crash when trying to play a track. Even running a command-line tracker like Schism Tracker would occasionally stutter! Eventually, I enabled realtime threads for audio, set the CPU governor to performance, and used JACK for passing audio to a USB audio interface. Renoise now works without stuttering, but it does take up a fair amount of CPU.
• If you try to play audio using the speakers, the speaker will pop when sound stops. It's pretty annoying.
• That speaker pop also happens when you (un)plug the PC from power, turn on the laptop, and occasionally when woken from sleep.
• It sometimes crashes while in sleep. Fortunately, after some updates, this doesn't seem to be an issue (yet).
• Sometimes, it won't even sleep! Then again, that's also an issue with my fancy Asus gaming laptop, so I guess I can cut the Pinebook a little slack here.
• The webcam is barely usable. At least you can disable it! But in all seriousness, it'll work in a pinch for Zoom calls. Just make sure you have good lighting, or you'll look like you're wading around in a tub of petroleum jelly.
• I really, really don't like Manjaro. Granted, I've never really been a fan of Arch Linux derivatives to begin with (I'll refrain on explaining why for the time being), and it is the default OS for the Pinebook Pro. There have been a few concerns regarding security and stability over the years. Also, while the laptop does support other operating systems, Manjaro is the only first-class citizen, and it looks like it will stay that way. I did manage to install Tow-Boot to try out other operating systems, and it's been pretty nice.
• Due to it running an ARM processor, some software I use on a regular basis is unavailable. In my case, I could not get RStudio Desktop or Zotero to compile, and that was a damper for my data science studies. Fortunately, Python and all popular data science libraries are available, and work just fine. You can even use Spyder for a more RStudio-like experience. I even managed to get .NET 6 up and running as well (why, I don't know).

And some of the good:

• The 1080p IPS display is shockingly good, especially for the price. I'm willing to say it looks better than the 1080p IPS display on my ThinkPad T470. Good colors, good viewing angles, decently bright. It does have a dead pixel present, but for $200, I wasn't expecting anything else.
• Build quality isn't bad. Nothing amazing, but for $200, I've had much worse experiences. Not too much flex, decent hinge. Metal exterior feels nice, but plastic interior feels a tad cheap.
• Given it's low amount of RAM (4 GB) and it's CPU, it performs better than I expected. Again, not a multimedia machine, but it is usable for office work. Programming works surprisingly well. Compile times aren't as slow as I expected, and it is more than usable for the data science stuff I'm working on these days. I can even run something like Visual Studio Code for running Jupyter notebooks without much fuss.
• I'm getting updates all the time, even some firmware updates! Some reassurance that the overall experience can improve over time. Even if it's stuck with Manjaro for the time being...

GPD P2 Max (2022)

I've always been a sucker for tiny laptops. With a 9" screen, this is pretty much the netbook I always wanted. It ain't perfect, however.

The bad:

• There is a lot of hardware (sound and power management comes to mind) that is hard to find drivers for. Strange, because they're Intel parts. Linux (for now) is a no-go for that reason. Even when it comes to Windows, you are recommended to install the GPD-provided recovery image.
• The fan sometimes turns on randomly when it's sleeping. That is an issue with my Asus laptop too, so I blame Microsoft for this.
• Battery drain during sleep is pretty rough. While I can leave most of my laptops asleep for days (even weeks) on end, this one will die after two days.
• The keyboard layout can be quite inconvenient. Things like the semicolon and dashes needing the Fn key do slow me down. Having only one Shift and Ctrl key is also inconvenient for programming. I can't really blame this on the machine, as there's only so much space you can dedicate on such a small device.

The good:

• The screen is gorgeous. Also, given its small size, it is still quite easy to read and make out text, even when using normally-sized fonts. You will definitely want to use Windows's scaling to keep things readable, however (by default, it is set to 2x/200% scale).
• Despite my qualms with the keyboard, it is decently sized, the keys feel pretty good, and after some practice, I can type at a decent pace. Honestly, it's nicer than than the Pinebook's keyboard!
• It runs pretty much everything I need for school.
• Performance is pretty good. The device never slows down, unless I REALLY start pushing it. Even then, it takes a lot. With day-to-day use, including a fair amount of data science stuff, it's never gotten slow enough to be noticeable.

Pocket C.H.I.P.

Back in college, I wanted one of these so badly. The idea of a tiny, handheld, Linux computer sounded awesome. And I LOVE the idea. Sadly, these weren't what I wanted them to be.

The keyboard is painful to use. It's like one of those old cellphone membrane keyboards, just worse. It's hard to type much more than a few lines using it.

It is SLOW. Even back in 2016, when it was a thing, it stuttered doing the most basic tasks. For example, the C.H.I.P. on the left is running Sunvox. This device struggles to play even slightly more complex songs, with audio clipping ruining any playback possibilities. Anything aside from command line apps (and the built-in PICO-8 games) are painfully slow.

However, you can definitely find things to do with them. I do use the one on the left for music making (under limited conditions), and the one on the right is used to keep track of a few servers I manage. It's also quite usable as a device for learning Linux programming (and some ARM assembly). As it's a fully functional Linux computer, you can install compilers, text editors, VNC servers, SSH servers, and more, to use as a little server.

I'm glad I finally got to try these out, but I wouldn't buy them again. And seeing as I got these as new-old stock, I probably won't have the chance anyway.

Steam Deck

Yeah, this is more of a console than a computer, but it runs Linux, so here it is.

There are more than enough people speaking about this for gaming, and I don't do much gaming to begin with, so let's quickly discuss how this works as a computer.

It performs quite well, but with a quad-core AMD processor and 16GB of RAM, that's not too surprising. A lack of keyboard makes stuff a little harder, but a decent USB/Bluetooth keyboard helps.

There is also the possibility of losing all installed applications (and other stuff) that isn't saved in your home folder, after (major) operating system updates. Plan accordingly.

You can see more details here.

tl;dr: Yes, it works as a computer. Just don't depend on it to become your main one.