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.
Depends what you call tech. I’ve been looking for a salt nic vape (say 10 watts) in the 1 ohm range with a easily replaceable battery for the last year. Bonus points if it doesn’t leak to hell and gone. Haven’t had a whole lot of luck with that so far.
Pretty much any portable device with a standard type, user replaceable battery. God bless Ryobi and the other power tool companies for building weird but useful tools beyond power drills. All with replaceable batteries.
At one point I was looking for any type robust portable storage media that had reasonable storage capacity and good shelf life (2+ years), and was large enough to actually write on a label what was on it. So far the closest I’ve seen since 2005 have been the portable SSDs and the newish USB m.2 enclosures but that’s still not quite what I’m looking for. Too large and non-standardized. Gave up on it several years ago and built a publicly accessible Nextcloud server. Yes I’m an old fart, dislike cloud storage and miss the floppy, Zip and Mini-Disk storage formats. I currently have a dozen mystery jump drives sitting on my desk in a 3d printed rack with only the vaguest clue whats on any of them. Most of them so small you can’t even put a key tag on them. I hate it.
A reliable multi port (4 or more) USB-C charger that can output 65+ watts on all of its ports at the same time.
A reliable source for 100w USB-c 3.x PD cables that don’t cost an arm and a leg. Anker makes good PD cables but tops out at USB 2.whatever.
Pretty sure more would come to mind if I sat and though about it for a while, but I’ve got to head to work now.
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”
Little retro games handheld with a clamshell oled display
Just wait for Anbernic Rg45XXV, which should be a few months away given the rate they put out devices.
The catch: it still uses H700 chipset
Shoes with build in wifi
I want a smart phone built into a shoe. Get Smart style.
A small android smartphone with good software support
Phones with smaller screens
Folding screen eReader…it would be extremely niche, but I want it
Recently heard about RePebble, so my complaining about smart watches may have to end
Holy shit. Thank you for bringing pebble to my attention.
No problem, have been on the search for a good replacement for a few years… Ever since destroying mine on a door frame when carrying a heavy box
I miss my pebble time
A Steam Deck with stock pricing in Mexico.
A decent brand of tws with multiple lights to indicate the amount of charge left. Also bigger battery.
All the branded stuff have single led with different colours to indicate charge percentage and also if paired or not.
I don’t want to remember fcking rainbow to know all the features.
Data cassettes using current LTO tech, but in standard compact cassette format
LTO cartridges are shaped so much more efficiently, for so many reasons, so why specifically compact cassette format?
Although I’m also just realising now that LTO is specifically optimized to be used linearly from start to finish (It’s even in the name) and is pretty inefficient if you’d want to use it a bit, remove it and using reading it later.
A high-quality laptop without any branding.
I’m currently using a 9-year-old, woefully underpowered laptop made by Xiaomi. Full aluminium unibody, and NO logo. Not printed on, not etched in, not glistening only in the right light. NO LOGO.
I’m not a billboard. I’m not responsible for your brand recognition. Ironically though, far more people have come up to me and asked “hey, what laptop is that” than ever would have cared if there was a logo on it.
It also just looks and feels fantastic, all-aluminium-no-logo just looks so sleek.
So yeah. I will not be upgrading until I find another laptop of the same build quality, with no logo. Tuxedo has that option for most of their laptops, but for some reason not for their only current full-aluminium body -.-
Oh, and don’t come at me with stickers.
Oh, and don’t come at me with stickers.
Well then. Maybe you could wrap your heart in duc-ta-a-ape! *runs away sobbing*
Fully agree with the sentiment, and at the same time I think it’s a lost battle. Even more so with more niche tech like cameras (where one is usually invested into an ecosystem instead of having just one piece like a laptop that can be sold on its own 5 years in).
I’ll extend that to every product as well. I hate branding specially in clothing.
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?
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
How low-tech is still tech?
I want a device that can be armed and if moved without being disarmed (optional passcode) will set off an alarm.
This is both for my laptop when working in public spaces and for my cooler/food bag when camping.
They have these for bikes, I’ve not looked too far into it, but maybe that would work?
As I’m getting more and more into keyboards, I’ve realised I dont want a laptop anymore.
I want a powerful phone (16GB RAM, 8-cores) that I can:
- a) use as a phone (smallish, please)
- b) use as a dockable workstation
That is, I can come home from work, slide my phone into a USB-C dock and start typing away on my Linux desktop with my fancy keyboard
Don’t quote me on this but I’m quite sure you can run Linux on Samsung phones with termux/prootdistro
Edit: I specifically mentioned Samsung because of their Dex mode but it seems plenty of other phones also allow video out via usb these days. I can’t say for sure they work well with Linux but I do know it’s doable on Samsung.
I remember the Ubuntu Touch had a feature like that that kinda worked, but they never fully commited to it.
As for doing it through Termux, I’m not convinced that X11 works terribly well in Android for it to reliably extend a display to another screen. I’ve never tried though, so I could be we way off
I haven’t used a laptop for many years now, I mostly code from an android tablet, into a remote machine. You can find ones with great battery life and keyboards.
Oh wow, I’m always surprised to hear about the coding habits of prolific devs. So you dont use a local IDE? You run termux and the code in vi/emacs on server?
Yep, I’ve coded remotely for many years now.
I used to use vim, but now helix, as my main rust and javascript/typescript IDE. So I mainly use termux+ssh .
Unfortunately for android dev you pretty much have to run android studio, so I use an android VNC client for that.
Fractal Design’s Pop cases have a 5.25" bay. It’s hidden behind a pop-off panel at the bottom, in the power supply basement.
