Stuff like a pretty case with slots for optical drives, a laptop with a shitton of ports and all-day battery life or anything else that seems to go against the trends.
This thread is for complaining about how you can’t find it and (maybe) finding it thanks to someone else.
A low power 17 inch or larger laptop in a sub $1K price point. I have big hands (and crap vision) and I use the fuck out of numpad, but i really dont need a gaming GPU or a higher end cpu in a laptop.
If you don’t need much power, you could probably look for something used and get a good deal on a 17" laptop.
A proper non-Apple Macbook Air equivalent. Because imo for the average user that just browses the internet and does some light office work it seems perfect. And with that I mean:
- fanless
- good screen preferably 3:2 or 16:10
- long battery life
- unlike the air expandable storage and ideally non soldered ram
- solid build quality
- priced at maybe 600-800€?
- doesn’t have to have the greatest performance
Tbh i thought we would get it with Intels lunar lake processors, but so far no luck.
Good luck finding anything fanless without being SOC. Though it looks like a Framework would make you happy: https://frame.work/
Honestly this sounds like a Chromebook to me.
Haven’t looked at Chromebooks in a while, but you are right that the use case would be similar.
However I was under the impression that they are mostly competing at a lower price point. So I assume you wouldn’t find nice build quality or screens.
Beyond that I am not really familiar with how chromeOS stacks up nowadays or if it would be trivial to install Linux/windows on them. Especially if they still have EOL dates after which they aren’t updated with software anymore.
A quick search tells me that Google seems to work on a laptop and plans to merge (?) android and chromeOS more.
So overall again products that share some aspects of what the MacBook Air makes attractive, but doesn’t offer the full package.
I have installed Linux on a Chromebook, actually. There’s a really good guide on MrChromeBox.tech
The screen on my Chromebook was fine, at least by my (admittedly somewhat low) standards.
And yes, the have EOL dates, which sucks. It’s why I installed Linux on mine.
I wonder if there is a Linux distro targeted at the average user who just browses the web and needs office software. I guess Mint comes a bit close, but it also has many other apps preinstalled.
Does your average non technical user who wants a device like this care if it’s not the highest quality screen?
The demographic that is just Apple fanboys and they weren’t giving up their overpriced garbage no matter what.
I didn’t specify “non technical” as I’d actually like one like it myself and would consider myself at least moderately tech-savvy. I meant average in what many people actually end up doing on their laptop, which is browsing, writing, watching videos and maybe doing some very minor productivity tasks.
That said i would say that yes, even non technical users would appreciate a high quality screen. They admittedly probably wouldn’t know to look out for it at purchase or what to look out for on a spec sheet, but in my opinion they would appreciate it during use (more so than some extra unneeded performance)
The demographic that is just Apple fanboys and they weren’t giving up their overpriced garbage no matter what.
Yes, apple fanboys will be fanboys, but the M-series Macbook Airs are imo are just a really great piece of hardware. Particularly the M1 when it came out and even nowadays imo is even priced decently for what it offers.
So far i don’t know a good non-Apple alternative that manages to fully match the M1 Macbook Air features (sans the non-upgradable storage that Apple charges way to much for and that destroys most of the value proposition).
My DBA has had the same two monitors for a decade and most of the devs just use whatever monitor was on sale.
Technical people are not the people buying Macs. Mac has its place and it hasn’t been technical folks since TPM chips and WSL.
If like to see what you think the “features” are that can’t be replaced. Literally every single feature of a Mac is implemented better with Windows or Windows with WSL. “It’s closer to Linux” No, Linux is closer to Linux and I can’t dual boot or WSL on Apple silicone. “Muh security” TPM is 10x more practical and slightly beats out Enclave in performance. “Muh hardware” if you spend that much money on any laptop it’ll perform well. If you spend that much on a Windows laptop you’d get even better hardware. You could build multiple Linux machines that each outperform the Mac for the same price. “It just works” I have had multiple hours long troubleshooting call with a Jr Engineer that proves otherwise. “Muh package manager” if you struggle with this, you’re not technical. “Muh iOS dev” iOS/Android apps can be tested in a pipeline or through the myriad of tools like Device Farm. Ship it with Fastlane and call it a day. You can handle both app stores this way.
Why do you want a Mac? The only valid choices are aesthetics, brand loyalty or ignorance.
Why do you want a Mac? The only valid choices are aesthetics, brand loyalty or ignorance.
I feel like something got lost in the discussion here. I don’t want a Mac, that’s the whole point.
I want a device that is like the Macbook air, but without the crap Apple pulls. So with easily expandable storage, ideally expandable RAM and an easy way to run another OS than MacOS on it (i am aware that in theory Ashai Linux is an option for Aplle silicon macs).
Because i do think in this case there are more valid reasons than “aesthetics, brand loyalty or ignorance”, simply because the Macbook air to me in many ways seems like a very well rounded, nice package (with the caveat of Apple doing Apple things) and the rest of the market doesn’t offer an equivalent. With the Macbook Air M1 being 4 years old by now and options like Intels Lunar Lake existing, it really would be possible to make.
There’s no advantage to being Mac like.
You can’t pick the most expensive brands and claim they’re “well rounded”. It’s like buying a luxury car and saying it’s your reliable little daily commuter.
The point is there is no valid reason besides the three reasons I stated for someone to want to buy a Mac. Either you like the looks, the brand or you just don’t know any better and you refuse to learn. Each of those options is valid, but you do have to pick one of them.
What is it about the MacBook Air that makes you feel it is well rounded? Why do you need the compute? Is it for video editing or 3D modeling? Because those run fantastic on midrange hardware now. Are you a developer? Because Mac hasn’t been the developer choice in over two decades. You know what’s better than being Linux like? Being Linux. WSL and the TPM chip removed anything else that might draw a rational consumer to Apple. Do a little gaming? I’ve got bad news about Macs. Lol. There’s no real reason anymore.
3:2 sounds horrible. What’s the application when most videos are 16:9?
Anything other than watching fullscreen video? 3:2 is so much better for reading, drawing, anything even vaguely productive. It’s very close to the ratio of metric paper.
Yea, I can see that. I mostly use my PC for games, but for work, I have multiple windows across the screen at different ratios.
As someone else already answered it is of course not ideal for movie consumption, since it gives you black bars top/bottom, but for productivity it is really nice. Everything from writing, spreadsheets or reading on the Internet benefits from it. Reading long horizontal sentences isn’t that comfortable and often times task bars at the top and/or bottom take away some extra space. So a typical 16:9 display ends up offering very little useful working space. The taller aspect ratio isn’t a massive shift, but a nice quality of life improvement.
It also means that you have slightly more space for the keyboard or a larger track pad.
If you are ever in a retail shop that carries Microsoft 's surface laptops you could check them out, as they are one of the few laptops that use a 3:2 aspect ratio display.
Dell XPS 13 Snapdragon seems like it’s trying to compete with the Air.
Sadly doesn’t seem to be fanless, which imo is a really nice feature when you dont care about high performance. Not sure if in the real world you can find good deals on the snapdragon laptops, but list price is also quite high and that keyboard with touch function keys doesn’t seem great either.
So in my book that’s still no match for what a macbook air m1/2 offers, which by now are a few years old and can be found for decent prices. They might be aiming at the same market, but aren’t equal.
Ah, good point!
You can easily get a case with an optical drive slot if you just get an older case. You can fit an older case with more modern components just fine. My current PC case is from 2017 and has an optical drive slot (which is fitted with an optical drive—though I’m afraid I’ve not used it in years…)
As for laptops with ports, they’re out there but you may have to either get an older one or pay more money annoyingly. I wish it was standard for laptops to have ethernet ports. My modern, fairly mainstream trend-following laptop has all the other ports I need (USB obviously, HDMI, and 3.5mm headphone jack).
Cheap large e-ink android screen. Doesn’t need to do anything other than be a consistent, always on display with a long battery life.
They look neat, but way too powerful and expensive, and not big enough. I want a whiteboard size e-ink display with a processor like a potato for like <100 USD
Hmm… The one I’ve seen; hisense for example its non touch, and the monitor is 1500 bucks… I’ve seen a big white board like thing at a local library and some schools, unsure what they are called or how much they cost. A quick search revealed the below but that is crazy expensive. I would then rather get a traditional white board with a marker and then take photos with a phone or camera and store in a hard drive… Not the same I guess…
QuirkLogic Papyr - A large 42-inch E Ink display designed specifically as a digital whiteboard. Priced around $6,000-7,000.
&
RICOH eWhiteboard 4200 - A 42-inch E Ink collaborative whiteboard, similar price range to the QuirkLogic.
As someone who’s been wanting a boox tablet for a while I don’t think they fit “cheap”
Yeah no you are right. I waited a couple years for pine64 tablet to become a commercially available project then gave up…then used paper and pencil a nd took photos everyday of my notes pages and manually stored them… But after a few notebooks my backup was getting large and tagging pages with text tags was getting annoying so Now I use go10.3 which wasn’t as expensive as some of the other ones like remarkable paper pro or boox tab ultra C pro… I use that offline. Copy things and docs via USB from laptop, and backup things manually and copy back into laptop manually…
what’s “large” and what’s “cheap”?
Rootable Android (or Linux) based “mp3 player”. Basically an iPod touch. No cell radio.
Literally couldn’t fall asleep last night, thinking about how much I’d want this and how hard it’d be to neuter a cellphone to make this.
I’m amazed I can’t find such a thing on AliExpress.
Why couldn’t you just use a custom launcher? This isn’t a hard task.
Let me preface this by saying that, compared to your average Lemmy user, I am not a technical person. What stuck in my head was removing the radio and comms tech completely - no cell radio, no wifi, no GPS. Literally just make it an average cellphone sized offline tablet, where you’re adding stuff only via the USB port or SD card slot.
Assuming this were possible/actually worth it, would probably need custom firmware to actually make it useable anyway. Just taking an off the shelf smartphone and using a custom launcher would likely be the more practical route, but I’d be more interested if it was offline only from a pure hardware perspective.
But I digress - I just thought it was funny to see this when it seriously was the “What if?” that made it hard for me to get to sleep the other day.
You’re thinking about it too hard.
Just use a launcher, sometimes called Kiosk mode/launchers, to launch one app. You can disable the other hardware if you want, but it doesn’t seem like it really helps you reach your goal.
You could probably pull it off with a Pi Zero, battery pack, and screen if you want to get into it a bit. It’s not that hard at all.
Probably - thought about it harder anyway (see: actually read stuff), and the closest you can probably get to what I was thinking about with your average smartphone is disconnecting and terminating all connections to the antennas.
Let’s be real, though - if I actually intended to use something like this, it’d for sure be something cobbled together using an SBC like the Pi Zero.
It’s not uncommon to just disable hardware you don’t intent to use. You don’t have to do it mechanically. There’s a lot of kiosks around that have a lot more capabilities than they’re used for.
If you’re looking to do it with a Pi, banana, orange or raspberry, let me know. I’ve spent way too much time finding the perfect screen to use and case to print. I build a rechargeable handheld device that can pull up all my surveillance cameras and functions as a master remote.
I might struggle to make it the size of an iPod Touch but that’s not difficult to build out of a Raspberry Pi.
That’s cool, hadn’t really thought about it. Basically looking for a wifi-only device I can install Signal on.
You’d get the desktop version of Signal doing it that way.
Nah. With an Android device, you can install the Signal app (it’s even on FDroid now). You’ll need a phone number to register it, but just to receive the code. Could be a mobile number you have, a landline, or a VoIP (ie, jmp.chat) number-- as long as you haven’t already registered for Signal with it.
A Linux device could pose some difficulty, but I think there is progress being made on running Android apps.
Edit: sorry, forgot some of the context here. Leaving it since I’m pretty sure you can install Android on a RasPi.
Yeah I usually think of the Raspberry Pi as a box for running Debian on.
A phone that runs Linux, has decent battery life, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
The reason this doesn’t work is because Android and iOS limit the crap out of app functionality to allow for battery optimization. On Linux, users (and apps) do whatever the crap they feel like (and that’s a good thing, until you talk about battery).
I’ve got one, but does it have to sell outside the EU too?
A SBC with SATA ports, to use as a Plex server. I’ve only ever found one (the Zimaboard), but it’s a bit pricey for something that I’d still have to find some way to house with an external HDD.
Ive heard some people use usbC connecting drive enclosures, could probably rig something up with the backplane from one of those, but yeah a finished product like that would be neat.
I think ive seen a mini-PC with a hotswap m.2 bay built in though?
The ODROID-HC4 has two SATA ports. Alternatively, you can get one with an NVMe slot and stick a NVMe to SATA card in it that will likely get you four ports.
I hadn’t looked at any ODROID stuff, and the HC4 is a cool looking solution! I’m actually even more impressed with the M1S, which has a built-in M.2 slot. Can’t use my existing spinny drives, but for the price of the M1S, I could pick up an NVMe drive to go with it.
Another option would be to get a RPi and throw a hat on it:
I had looked at those, but the hat alone is over $70. Plus they need an RPi5, because earlier ones don’t have a PCIe interface. For that much, I could get a Beelink or something similar.
The hat is a cool idea, though.
A laptop with trackpad buttons
Lenovo is the only one I can find, and they’re above the pad for the nub
I’d like a way to disable all the various way too bright indicator lights.
Electrical tape
The edhesive eventually melts down and becomes a sticky mess. Expidided by heat.
there are sticker packs for that, called “light stickers” or whatever
They put the lights behind ports, controls, vents etc that you can’t tape over. And indicator light is helpful I just dont need to read a book with it.
Sometimes spraypaint or model paint works but not suitable to every application.
I’d really love to find a new radio for my car that: 1) can serve as a monitor for my back-up camera, and 2) isn’t a fucking touch screen.
There are models that are one or the other, but I haven’t found anything that’s both. The closest I’ve found is a compromise - a touchscreen that also has a few tactile controls. But I don’t want to have to rely on any touch screen when I’m driving. I simply don’t feel compelled enough to spend $400+ for a frustrating half-measure.
My nissan rogue (2014-2016ish) has this
I settled on a SPH-10BT a few years ago. It didn’t have backup camera support though IIRC there is a radar add-on, but don’t know how available it is anymore.
It seems insane to me, especially with the prevalence of Apple/Android Auto, that no car company is willing to have the phone be the supplemental screen in the car.
That there’s no built-in phone mounts in cars still bugs me. Put wireless charging on a spot on the dash, NFC/Bluetooth to get it to automatically snap into car mode. Don’t have to develop an in-house UI that everyone hates and can focus on making a car.
Shoes with build in wifi
I want a smart phone built into a shoe. Get Smart style.
dick sucking robot
A Linux phone with colour e-ink screen and writing capabilities like the reMarkable.
I’ve realized that for a lot of things that a phone does, e-ink is too slow to refresh. Even web browsing becomes painful to navigate sometimes. Maybe a dual-screen approach would work with e-ink on one side and a regular screen on the other?
Yeah, maybe, not a bad idea. I’d be happy to use my phone less, though. Call, messaging app, note taking, and maps is all I need. I can leave browsing for when on the PC.
I’m reminded of something I saw recently where a guy had a mini old screen for typing, but an e-ink main screen. It was a DIY cyberdeck, and weird enough that I don’t think it’s useful for you or OP, but I figured you’d find it interesting to hear that your suggestion seems to be on the right track
Toilet that posts updates to Facebook
An app like Shazam but that shows me : this is the song you played and these are the songs it reminds you of because the melody is from here and the vocals melody is from here etc. I am mad that every other song reminds me of another but I cannot check which one it is.
