I have one of these. It's an awful piece of shit and I love it.
I bought it because I was going on holiday and didn't want to take a real laptop both in case it got stolen and to dissuade me from using it. I ended up using it more than I would have a normal laptop because it's so small and easily carried.
My current use case is for my commute into the office, it easily fits on the microscopic train tables and doesn't add much weight to my bag. Highly recommended.
I think, realistically, the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad - would drive me up the wall for any kind of serious use.
But then, if you're travelling on holiday, do you really want serious use? I like your rationale of taking something that's bad enough that you won't want to use it but you have something if you really need it even if it didn't quite work out that way for you.
And, apart from theft, and depending on where I'm travelling, maybe a cheap device that I don't mind the authorities rifling through the storage of wouldn't be such a bad thing. Like I don't necessarily want $RANDOM_CUSTOMS_PERSON_IN_SOME_COUNTRY to have access to my bank statements, account details, or to get into my social media accounts, or whatever.
And it would be nice not to have to worry about any of that stuff if the machine did get stolen (sure, the drive on my main laptop is encrypted, but physical access is always a massive force multiplier when trying to gain access to a system or its contents).
I've been to a lot of countries (and thus through a lot of customs agents), the most they ever ask me to do, if anything at all, is turn the laptop on. I think the point is they want to make sure it's an actual laptop and not just a shell hiding something else. I've never had an agent touch my machine or show any interest in doing so, and I say that as someone who gets the extra searches often because I carry a lot of odd looking parts and small tools for work. Just pointing that out because I think the paranoia about what customs agents are allowed to do is a bit overblown unless you're suspected of smuggling or transporting something nefarious. They're not interested in what's on your laptop until you give them a reason to be.
I almost got denied boarding for a EU -> US flight ~13 years ago because the TSA agent at the gate noticed my 2011 MBP had 2 screws missing on the bottom panel (I've opened it up a bunch of times and lost some screws in the process). It didn't convince them that I turned it on and logged in etc. They still had doubts because, apparently, missing screws on a macbook was unheard of.. in the end, they held up the plane for ~10 mins due to waiting for a go/no-go decision via phone from some decision maker at the airline (as the final call was apparently theirs to make for some reason). Luckily, they were OK with missing screws and I was let on board.
I think it probably depends where you're going. We have relatives in a country where it might be a bit more of a concern, and we did briefly research taking a trip there to visit them, which is when all of this came up. In the end, for a variety of reasons, we decided it was going to be too risky to take that trip unless and until conditions change.
There are many countries where I wouldn't be at all worried about that, but I'd still be concerned about the possibility of theft (which, let's be real, can happen anywhere: I went on a trip to Switzerland once - generally considered very safe and low crime - where somebody had their laptop stolen from their room).
> the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad
I don't have the same problems with my model, possibly theirs is bad. I don't like that the keyboard is teeny and in the ANSI layout but I got used to it.
The trackpad isn't great but that's just yet another reason to avoid using the mouse and do everything with the keyboard.
That being said, I would never use it for fulltime use. I'm not even using it to type this message even though it's right next to me. I use it while travelling and it remains off at all other times.
> "I think, realistically, the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad - would drive me up the wall for any kind of serious use."
Me too. But the tray table compatibility resonates. I had hoped someone would build a modern netbook as a detachable focused on productivity and light gaming (say, Steamdeck class), maintainability and (modular) expandability; a modern road warrior that's also a nice hobbyist machine that stands some abuse. Framework was/is positioned to put something out, but they decided to release the F-12 instead.
I mean for the price I can get used thinkpads (and replace the battery if needed) and not have to deal with the crappy parts - I only have to deal with older parts.
Oh man. I have a ThinkPad L14 as my personal, beater, okay to take on the plane to Japan or whatever machine. And I hate it because it's too big. But I'm also hooked on it because it has pretty decent performance, excellent battery life with the third party battery I put in it, acceptable keyboard, acceptable trackpad.
I read this review with mounting excitement until I got to the part about the things he doesn't like. And yeah, those things would drive me up the wall too.
Although it might be fine if that touchy keyboard works well for touch typists. For me, that's everything.
I just tested and yes - if I press the exact corner of the key with a pencil then it doesn't register correctly. Everywhere else seems absolutely fine and given how small the keys are I genuinely wasn't able to recreate this with my finger. In order to actually press the key I have to push down on enough of the key for it to register.
My solution for this use case is a used Thinkpad X270. Unreal battery life and adequate performance. Got mine in like-new condition a couple years ago for $90. It's a fine substitute for factory-spec e-waste. Mine has the cheapo screen, but it was a cheap laptop so whatever. I don't get the author's complaint about the "2K" (whatever that is) display. Cheap laptop has a cheap screen, oh the humanity!
I bought an old Intel 12" Macbook off of my employer for that reason. 10 bucks, 9y old, still good enough for anything where an Android phone sucks (people who like using phones may disagree, it's ok).
This looks cool but I care a lot more for even 100 bucks than 10 :P
I feel spoiled because the train table on my train of choice fits my 16in Macbook , almost like it was made with the sole purpose of carrying this laptop on it
I disagree - finding a relevant stock photo requires you to do some searching and filtering. Using an obviously flawed generated image makes it look like you typed a vague prompt in and picked the first thing that came up without doing any refinement.
The versioning issue I've seen across libraries that version change in many languages.
I don't tend to hit Python 2 issues using LLMs with it, but I do hit library things (e.g. Pydantic likes to make changes between libraries - or loads of the libraries used a lot by AI companies).
I’ve found recent Claude to be much better in this regard. I think a lot rests on the quality of the harness and the work behind the scenes done to RAG up to date docs or search for docs proactively rather than guessing.
I also don’t have issues with quality of Python generated. It takes a bit of nudging to use list comps and generators rather than imperative forms but it tends to mimic code already in context. So if the codebase is ok, it does do better.
That could be it. I still see LLMs fail a set of static typing challenges that I created a couple years ago as a benchmark. Google models still fail it. I wonder if the lack of typing in a lot of the training data makes python harder to reason about?
I agree, and I would think the same, but I also feel like many things I've been sold as "door openers" for interviews unfortunately tend to ultimately be things that no one cares about.
I think people tend to squander door openers with bad layouts or information density. Most CVs are essentially the same as each other, just a bullet point list of jira ticket titles.
Do I care if someone has won the world championship for ping-pong 3 years in a row? Not particularly. Does it make them stand out against a sea of slop? Only if I actually see that info when skimming! But if I do see it, I'm probably going to stop and re-read the whole thing, which is a tactical advantage.
So you're giving me an idea for my midlife career change CV. Lead with the cool and interesting fact above all else, then have the normal CV menu fare at the end.
Hmm this is also drumming up the hard question of: What have I actually done which is ACTUALLY an attention-grabber...
I would assume they have built some key problem-solving skills that can be valuable. Training in tooling is much easier than building the right mindset.
Given I've spent the last few weeks teaching myself CAD and completely designing a custom 3d printed racking system for my consumer networking gear from scratch, I would like to think that "I decided to do this ostensibly stupid and pointlessly difficult thing for a minor aesthetic improvement even when a blatantly easier (and possibly better) option is available" is a valid reason for humans to do things.
Besides, that green quartz crystal is beautiful. If you can only afford to carry a limited number of objects then I personally would try to find a way to turn it into an object I can hold, use, and admire every day.
I remember when having as little code to maintain as possible was an engineering goal. My professors were adamant that code reuse was a virtue. I had "less code = less bugs" drilled into me.
I'm sure the new way is better though, given how much my boss seems to be tracking my token usage these days...
Depending on how badly you nuked it, it's probably still in your `git reflog` locally. Normal git hangs on to orphaned commits too. (Until `git gc` runs)
It makes sense in certain contexts, but it is batshit insane that it is enabled on a program (including any linked stuff) level. It would have made sense as numbers with separate types or perhaps even if you marked a region in code and it applied only to code in that region. Then the consequences of enabling it could be understood in ways that could be safe and usable (eg enabling it for a hot loop where the numerical ranges are well defined and safe in context).
You could get entire publisher catalogues for peanuts. I think at least half my steam library is useless filler because I bought every game WB ever published for $40 to get the new batman game or similar.
I payed like 100 bucks (probably less, i don't remember the exact amount) for everything valves ever published, which isn't as good of a deal but shows it can still be done
I bought it because I was going on holiday and didn't want to take a real laptop both in case it got stolen and to dissuade me from using it. I ended up using it more than I would have a normal laptop because it's so small and easily carried.
My current use case is for my commute into the office, it easily fits on the microscopic train tables and doesn't add much weight to my bag. Highly recommended.
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