GPD Pocket 3 – Handheld PC with KVM and RS-232 | Hacker News Reader

GPD Pocket 3 – Handheld PC with KVM and RS-232

gpd.hk

224 pointskbumsik122 comments

They're running it under their "Pocket" brand, but with its aggressively practical port layout (including RS232!) it looks a like it's being positioned as the long promised successor to the (fabulous) GPD Micro PC. This impression is bolstered by the odd touchpad and mousebutton placement - copied straight from the Micro PC.

Which is a bit of a shame, because it sacrifices the thing which made the Micro PC a peerless gamechanger - pocketability (ironically). 8 inches is not a pocketable laptop, it's a standard netbook. Which is fine and nice and doubtless many will love it, but... disappointing. What I really wanted was double battery life and cellular modem so I wouldn't have to carry a phone anymore.

I'm getting mixed messages from the touchpad placement as well. That design is perfect for using the computer with your thumbs while walking, and quite awkward for sitting down at a desk. It works fantastically well on the Micro PC, with its clicky thumb keyboard. Yet an 8 inch netbook would seem to be too large for thumb typing. What are the intended ergonomics here?

The swappable rear port for all the exotic KVM stuff is a fascinating feature.

I have a GPD Win Max, which has about the same size keyboard, and it's a bit awkward at first, but you get used to it pretty quickly.

I own both the MicroPC and GPD Pocket 2. The difference in size is not that large, IMO. In fact, I did carry the Pocket around in the front pocket of my pants for a while, specifically as a portable but full-featured device. Granted, these were cargo pants, but still.

Right, the Pocket 2 is a diagonal inch bigger than the MicroPC. This is another diagonal inch bigger on top of that. It's definitely not going to fit in my back jeans pocket the way the MicroPC does. It crosses the line from "phone" to "tablet" size.

Real RS232 may sound nice, but in the last 15 years or so, I didn't come upon any problem that couldn't be solved by a $5 USB to RS232 converter. And those things don't need any more space in your pocket than a regular RS232 cable.

I suspect the RS232 on this is in fact exactly one of those $5 converters, and the swappable ports internally just use USB.

I have GPD Micro PC and have turned it on maybe twice this year. It is an extremely niche product.

I had fond memories of Toshiba Libretto from late 90s and also how I loved the very first Asus Netbook. Those were distorted memories.

GPD Micro PC just was not practical enough to use day to day.

95% of time Dell XPS 13 will be more practical for actual work while an ereader or tablet will be better for consumption.

Beware connecting GPD devices to your home or corporate network:

https://old.reddit.com/r/gpdwin/comments/8qfvuh/warning_new_...

https://old.reddit.com/r/gpdwin/comments/n5u1sy/yep_malware_...

Wipe, install Linux

Agreed, or use a clean debloated Windows image from the community's subreddit

Is there an advantage to using their image, like hard to find/install drivers? I generally always advise people to use first party install media, in this case, via Media Creation Tool.

Yeah, the GPD stuff generally has very specific to them drivers. Internally they straddle the line between regular PC and embedded device and there's some custom code to smooth over the differences.

FWIW, at least some of their devices will happily work with a mainline Linux kernel. I have a GPD MicroPC running Debian Buster.

Yep, I've got a GPD Pocket running Mint.

GPD pocket 2 running mint here too (well, until the battery bloated)

Oof, I'm sorry. I'm really lucky to not have hit any battery bloat issues it seems. I don't even treat it well, regularly leaving it in my car's back window sill.

I’ve had a lot of trouble reinstalling Windows on similar devices, the worst of which was a 2-in-1 tablet laptop, RCA brand sold at Walmart. I forget the model exactly, but they sold new under $200, maybe even under $100 on sale. I couldn’t find the vendor who assembled them, but I think it was a W101 V or V2, originally shipping with Windows 8/8.1. Whenever I tried to clean install Windows 10, I could get everything to work but the touchscreen driver.

I wish I still had that driver to see why it wouldn’t install, but I’m not sorry I don’t have the tablet, as it was a end user repair job. I tried DoubleDriver[0] to save my Windows 8 driver config, but it wouldn’t work under restore on Windows 10. I tried Snappy Driver Installer Origin[1], and none of the drivers in my driver db worked. I even tried DriverStoreExplorer[2] to manually install from the .cabs and .infs. No luck.

I suspect it had OEM offsets, registry keys, or other customizations which are applied at install time. I eventually had to use the OEM factory reset through the Shift + Restart menu to reinstall Windows 8, then in-place upgrade to Windows 10.

It really makes me wonder what the market forces and actors are doing, such that a poorly integrated, barely functional underpowered laptop, with nonstandard hardware and software, can be sold in big box stores. I suspect that price conscious customers with basic needs get the majority of these, closely followed by gifts for kids or other family/friends.

I usually have great success with these tools, but certain hardware tends to have vendor/integrater modifications to the OEM driver. I didn’t have time to dig into the reasons why in this specific case, but the OEM didn’t even provide a driver/installer for this model for the touchscreen. I know that for some people losing a touchscreen may not be a big deal, but as I was doing the repair as a service, I wanted total restoration of original OEM state, ideally without any unnecessary bloat. Can’t win them all, I guess.

I eventually got there, and it was the long way I knew would work, but it wasn’t the Windows 10 clean install I had hoped for the end user. They were more than happy with the repair and so I choose to be happy with the outcome also, if not with the hoops I had to jump through, which ended up being for naught. All’s well that ends well.

[0] http://www.boozet.org/dd.htm

[1] https://www.snappy-driver-installer.org

[2] https://github.com/lostindark/DriverStoreExplorer

I dealt with a bunch of these types of issues at my previous workplace. They used cheap consumer Windows tablets for point-of-sale kiosks.

Trying to maintain a single deployable Windows 10 image for these devices was a real pain and it often was the touchscreen drivers that gave issues. Drivers with the same device/driver IDs but different settings if I remember correctly (it's been awhile since I was involved in this stuff). Touchscreen orientation and calibration was also a nuisance between models, which is where I suspect some of the driver customizations done by the OEMs are needed.

I think the market forces are just getting something as cheap as possible to market that satisfies the bare minimum. It's assumed that you won't be fresh installing anything onto them. I found a lot of hardware in this class was okay as a single-purpose device where you'd only ever be running one application at a time (though barely so if what you're running is a web browser).

Of course you’re right; low cost is the main selling point of these classes of computers, secondary to basic functionality beyond booting to desktop.

It almost feels like the low end tech is just a grab bag of cheap spare parts to keep the assembly lines hot between higher profit margin product runs. But most of these weird third party PCs aren’t made by well-known OEMs, so what is really going on here? How do these smaller OEMs make money?

i have always found the microsoft model here understandable but unfortunate.

i'm running stock linux on my gpd pocket 2 and i have never even had to consider whether there is any special hardware (apart from the rotated screen -- that required adding a parameter each to the kernel cmdline and the x11 config).

in particular the seemingly problematic on windows goodix touchscreen driver appears to have been part of the linux kernel since early 2015 when 3.19 got released: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux...

Don't.

I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656645 a number of times. Since then WSL v2 happened, even better.

Unless there’s a firmware back door.

Are those for sure real? In a former job, I supported system software for Windows (among other OSes), and it'd be like once a quarter that one of the antivirus companies would mistakenly flag us as malware, and since they all share signatures, the others would all flag us like a week later. It was a huge pain, because they'd kill our auto update mechanism too.

I would agree, these don't look super compelling without some report of what the software allegedly does.

It's been a while. Years.

Since they were able to point their finger at an "offending binary", you'd think there'd be some published work on analysis of this binary by now.

But I couldn't find any. Why?!

I purchased the previous version of their "tech" mini laptop the GPD Micro PC.

Most of the preorder/first batch shipped with a defective battery that couldn't charge if it ever dropped to zero. After waiting months for a replacement battery I had to install it myself, only to find out that the replacement battery had the same issue. Tossed the thing in a drawer and haven't tried using it since.

Based on the other issues I have seen from r/GPD on Reddit, I think QA/testing is basically non-existent on these products. If you are lucky and get a good one from the factory they aren't bad, but issues are rampant.

Interesting, I didn’t know that was the flaw. The battery in mine lasted less than 3 months, so this doesn’t sound like a coincidence.

It’s interesting seeing people sing the praises of the Micro, I treat it as a lesson learnt.

Huh, that doesn't sound like something I'd want rotting in a drawer! Haven't had any batteries actually explode/burn but saw many that (physically) broke their devices when they bloated.

Same deal, although mine was out of the warranty window when this started happening. (A slightly over a year.) Removed the battery and was just using it on AC power.

And then the hinge holding the display broke (seems to be another common problem too...) I'm not impressed by their build quality...

It's typical Chinese crap. My GPD Pocket came with pressure marks on the LCD backlight out of the box. I got it swapped under warranty. The promised 12-hour battery life is more like 1, which is a shame, because the thing is so slow that you'll need the extra battery life to get anything done.

It lives in a drawer now.

I had a GPD XD that bricked a chunk of it's own circuitry, all of the screen became fuzzy and distorted. All because I cold-reset it while it was on power. I did nothing else to it to make this happen. Amazon accepted the refund, and I look at GPD devices with distrust-by-default now.

i think you're looking for reviews.ycombinator.con

I would visit this site if only it existed.

I think that would be a legitimately useful sub-site of HN. “Review: <device name>“ with a menu link filter on the main site like Jobs does.

I think so too, but then I think about review spam, spoofed listings, and all kinds of other misaligned incentives that reviews attract. I think if it were as good as HN is on average, it would be an interesting subsite, but the mods and the users create something special on HN scale. I’m just not sure a HN review site would get the love it needs to be better than mediocre.

All that said, I’d still read it for the comments.

Would fit in my purse and connect to my thunderbolt desktop setup (dual 4k OLED with a nice SK8835 keyboard)

I would gladly pay extra for an OLED screen, ECC ram, and a 2nd m2 port to plug a 4G or 5G module.

At the moment I'm playing with a WoA (Windows on ARM64) Lumia 950 XL running Windows 10 Pro, it's wonderful to have a Windows Terminal with me at all times to SSH, even if it is a tad slow when opening multiple apps.

I'm waiting right now for an Astro Slide 5G transformer that could cover that niche (not sure about the dual screen, but it can do at least one). It can boot either to Android or Linux, and has two usb-c ports (as well as a full qwerty keyboard).

Can't say if it will be good or not, as we haven't still received the device from the crowdfounding, but the production has already started so it shouldn't be long.

This is a modern-day Toshiba Libretto which takes design cues from the Framework and I frickin' love it -- on paper. I'm not going to early-adopt the thing but I'm interested to see how it shakes out.

Or like my old Compaq Contura Aero.. Cool stuff in those days.

Seems a little larger than most of their devices. I'm not sure carrying an 8" laptop really gains much from your standard 12" or 13" laptop since in either case you're out of pocket or small pouch territory.

I still think the GPD Win 2 was their device witht he best design direction, even if it wasn't a perfect implementation of the goals. 6" was the perfect size for the niche, the gamepad mouse controls were easier to use than the corner touchpad, the keyboard had more buttons, and it was more all purpose. Newer innards and higher quality physical components for the keyboard+gamepad would be killer. The 3 went far too gaming console focused trying to be a Nintendo Switch with a hidden keyboard rather than a computer.

I agree, this is basically a gorgeous and modern netbook loaded with ports. Which is a wonderful product and desperately needed! But not quite as revolutionary as some of their other products.

I can't speak to their other products, but the GPD Micro PC is basically a perfect product for what it tries to be. I've never used anything that made such a perfect set of ergonomic decisions. The crazy bastards managed to make a phone-sized laptop that actually works as a laptop.

I find the corner touchpad to be extremely usable on the GPD Micro PC, by the way. I haven't tried the Win 2, to be fair, but I find it difficult to picture a joystick nub being more precise.

Regarding the joystick !ouse control the way GPD did it was a bit different from your typical "joystick cursor with acceleration" it was more limited linear speed and if you wanted to go faster you held a certain shoulder button. The l and r main shoulder buttons were left and right click and the remaining shoulder button was middle click (or something like this). In that way you had access to do all of the things you would do on a mouse and the speed control was very reactive rather than hoping you hit enough strength on the right portion of an acceleration curve or anything like that.

The touchpad isn't bad but it's much more difficult to do certain normal desktop mouse related things like most small track pads are. Particularly when it comes to actions combined with wide motion such as click and drag select then right click.

FWIW I have a similar device (Chuwi minibook) and it really is pocketable. However I realized that at least for me, a better keyboard and more screen real estate would come in handy more often than extreme portability (plus support from some of these small brands is pretty bad)

I used to have an 8.4 inch tablet, and while I couldn't fit it in a pocket it was still "take it with me everywhere" in a way that a 12 inch laptop wasn't.

Has anyone tried typing on an 8" keyboard like this? I had a 10.1" netbook back in 2010 and loved typing on it.

Otherwise, is there any modern equivalent to a 10" netbook that isn't a super expensive tablet? Ideally something I could install Linux on and use for light programming and SSHing.

I'm also interested in foldable keyboards that I could use with my phone over Bluetooth or USB C.

The fact it fits in my small shoulder pouch (like my iPad does) and my MacBook doesn’t, and it still looks like it could be used held in two hands, I think it’s quite interesting.

Amazon lists the GPD Pocket 2 at $730, and that's for half the RAM and a quarter the storage of this one. Draw your own conclusions about how much the Pocket 3 will cost. https://www.amazon.com/Update-8GB-Windows-Portable-Processor...

  Pocket 3 - 1195G7: $999
  Pocket 3 - 1195G7 + module: $1079
  Pocket 3 - N6000: $650
  Pocket 3 - N6000 + module: $730

DHL costs included. All IGG backers get a 4096 stylus.

From Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwincn/status/1453982767381762054

Module here is the kvm module?

I don't know, there appear to exist 3 modules [1], KVM, RS232 and a USB 3 A port.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsRixkYu5I0

Apparently both kvm and serial

I owned a Pocket 1, and I'm still bitter about it.

After about a year of light use, the battery swelled up. Replacement batteries were out of stock and never replaced. The response was like, "Uh yeah old model. Sorry."

Similar experience here. Pocket 1, light use... CPU had some kind of flaw which took months to get fixed and returned... then the battery swelled so bad it cracked the motherboard.

They sure LOOK nice on the webpage, but I won't put any more money into one.

Longest screen of text in the world, ever, and the "buy now" call to action doesn't work so no idea of price...

It is usually crowdfunding on indiegogo. So maybe that will happen any moment.

According to their twitter, Nov 5th, 10:00AM BEIJING time

https://twitter.com/softwincn/status/1456207719069749256?t=v...

I appreciate the details, feels like they know what they're doing. (target user, use case, design goals etc.)

The order now button is a bit premature, it isn't schedule to start selling until tomorrow on Indiegogo.

From Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwincn/status/1456207719069749256?t=v...

"GPD Pocket 3 Indiegogo crowdfunding starts on 5th Nov 2021, 10:00AM BEIJING time 5th Nov 2021, 2:00AM GreenwichMeanTime Total 45 days! 30% off if you back us on Indiegogo. The stylus is free provided but only for IGG backers! IGG page: https://t.co/zEMaOUJfIX"

Huh nice, I like this idea. KVM to access servers, serial port, actual ethernet <3 wow. This is really cool. One thing that would be slightly nicer would be if the KVM and RS232 would both be present at the same time but at least it looks like they include both (unlike toughbooks where you have to shell out for that stuff). I wonder if it's a "real" serial port though, or just a USB-serial converter.

I wonder about the price though because the "Order now" just redirects to the same page.

I had a GPD Pocket 1 which was great for about six months until its battery swelled to dangerous proportions and I had to dispose of it. $500 gone :(

Unlike and Apple (Yes mine is swollen and not under warranty of any kind) device the GPD Pocket 1 is not difficult to open [1] and you could have probably replaced that battery.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTymxvORuZA

Yeah my GPD Pocket 1 battery swelled as well after a year but I was able to pull it out and replace it with a new battery from AliExpress. It's still going strong with the new battery.

Obviously, this has more powerful hardware than the Pocket 2 - but to me, it feels less appealing than the Pocket 2 in every other aspect.

Most noticeably size. It's significantly larger and thicker than the Pocket 2 - and size is the one standout feature of the Pocket. The size is what makes it unique.

Looks like they listened to indiegogo gpd sponsors like myself for this one. The best I had was the pocket 1, the pocket 2 I sold immediately after, the win3 is a lovely monster for gaming but this looks like a great move. Gpd makes nice machines and Linux is usually supported well, so I might get one.

Here is a good "quick" review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsRixkYu5I0

Hah, it really is a Micro PC 2 - it says so on the motherboard! (4:46)

Seems quite vanilla Intel. I hope it runs Linux well, but, in this format, the i7 is overkill. The battery must be really limited and an Atom would probably be a better match.

Yeah I bet it will also be temperature constrained in this small form factor, even with the alu enclosure.

Especially sitting behind a server rack being blasted by hot exhaust air :D

What uses RS-232 these days?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-232

Headless Equipment with a console.

It’s usually the interface of last resort, when all others were misconfigured into silence.

Rackmount networking hardware (routers, switches), disk arrays/storage appliances, etc. I work with a lot of equipment that does. It's usually a rj-45 connector on the hardware, but you just use a cable that has rs-232 on one end and rj-45 on the other. The fact that this has an actual rs-232 port makes it really tempting for me to buy one!

But if you're already using a cable that adapts to a different connector, why not just use a USB to RJ-45 serial cable?

Industrial equipment like CNC machines.

My VT-220.

And my VT-520! <3

Plenty of embedded still does.

It's the first thing that works, JTAG or other proprietary debug ports aside. It's the thing that you start with in order to get everything else to work, and it's the thing that works when everything else fails. That's why my desk is full of RS232 dongles and cables. The first thing I need to do when I get a new board is to figure out where the console is.

Except few of those use actual RS232 voltage levels, which would just be an useless expense.

Well our boards do support the full swing. Except for the latest prototype which I got a few weeks ago, that one talks 3V3 TTL levels.

Out of curiosity, what kinds of boards?

Multi-purpose boards ranging from ~Nano-ITX to Flex-ATX in size. Typical features include dual power inputs, a bunch of ethernet ports, rs232 & rs485 ports, isolated gpios, analog inputs, wireless modem (3g/lte/5g), and more depending on the board. These are used for things such as hooking up on prem sensors and alarm systems, providing redundant internet / vpn connectivity for devices, remote management of devices that either don't have direct internet support at all or aren't actually secure enough to be exposed (or just can't allocate a public IP address and thus need a tunnel/vpn for management), etcetra.

ooooh.

Not what I was expecting. I somehow associated "find console" and "board bringup" with notions of signal analysis and 23 SMA connectors and "BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request" and "ARGH it was a hairline solder bridge this entire time". Need to despecialize my definitions a bit.

But that's very cool. How does the redundant connectivity stuff work? Just basic failover, or WAN bonding? (I'm also vaguely aware that some setups sometimes go through carriers that will provision a custom APN packaged with an upstream VPN so the device is physically isolated from the public internet, which can both increase security and lower cost from port scans etc.)

(Also, in a prior comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032123) you mentioned how Allwinner offer an SIP with DDR3 - interesting. I've been idly curious for a while about where the FC100s-based "my business card runs Linux" would be at a couple years on, and what a minimal working example would look like. Definitely a bit of a tangent though.)

> Not what I was expecting. I somehow associated "find console" and "board bringup" with notions of signal analysis and 23 SMA connectors and "BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request" and "ARGH it was a hairline solder bridge this entire time". Need to despecialize my definitions a bit.

Oh it can be a bit like that sometimes. Kernel crashes, general instability, overheating, broken (or shorted) PMICs, miswired signals (turns out it's very easy to get TX and RX pairs between CPU & peripheral mixed up), wrong voltage levels, wrong clocks, peripherals missing firmware.. I've seen it all, and I've had plenty of use for the oscilloscope recently. Hopefully we'll get the next prototype soon-ish but there's still stuff that needs to be debugged :) I'm kinda spread thin between board bringup & debugging and writing new features for the customer.

> How does the redundant connectivity stuff work? Just basic failover, or WAN bonding?

There's more than one mechanism in place. The basic route failover stuff in Linux doesn't work very well (afaict it only detects the gateway going down, which doesn't help if the gateway is another on-prem router which stays alive when the link to ISP goes belly up). So we've got periodic ping probes (to a configurable set of IPs) which promote/demote the corresponding route when a few probes succeed/fail.

We've also got a daemon which maintains multiple connections (also multiple protocols) to multiple servers through all WAN interfaces and all connections do regular keepalives; packets are rerouted to another connection when one fails. It can also duplicate packets to multiple connections simultaneously (it's often necessary to get alarms delivered to more than one place), among other things. It's sort of an overlay network that performs VPN-like functions (and more) on and off the internet, and can tunnel anything from SMS to serial ports to raw ethernet to individual TCP & UDP ports or specific protocols like FTP.

Bonding as such isn't implemented but it's on the radar.

> Oh it can be a bit like that sometimes. Kernel crashes, general instability, overheating, broken (or shorted) PMICs, miswired signals (turns out it's very easy to get TX and RX pairs between CPU & peripheral mixed up), wrong voltage levels, wrong clocks, peripherals missing firmware.. I've seen it all, and I've had plenty of use for the oscilloscope recently. Hopefully we'll get the next prototype soon-ish but there's still stuff that needs to be debugged :)

On the one hand, yikes; on the other hand, coool :)

> I'm kinda spread thin between board bringup & debugging and writing new features for the customer.

[Cries in long distance]

Shipping hardware to AU would probably be a bit... unsustainable ;_;

> There's more than one mechanism in place. The basic route failover stuff in Linux doesn't work very well (afaict it only detects the gateway going down, which doesn't help if the gateway is another on-prem router which stays alive when the link to ISP goes belly up).

Oh yay.

> So we've got periodic ping probes (to a configurable set of IPs) which promote/demote the corresponding route when a few probes succeed/fail.

*Takes notes*

I'm switching to sorta-fiber soon and the connection comes with a 4G backup. Using a modem without SMA (which no Consumer™ would ever need, right?) in a "what's service?" reception area. So I'm planning to reimplement the 4G failover with my own dongle (and antenna) :3

At least that's the theory. Not sure if it'll work. Waiting for my old DSL connection to die first so I can record the click, because I'm... weird. :P

> We've also got a daemon which maintains multiple connections (also multiple protocols) to multiple servers through all WAN interfaces and all connections do regular keepalives; packets are rerouted to another connection when one fails.

Cool.

> It can also duplicate packets to multiple connections simultaneously (it's often necessary to get alarms delivered to more than one place), among other things.

Does this use a confidence scoring system or does it just copy everything Nx -> 1:N?

(...admittedly I'm now thinking of the bandwidth management in multi-SIM video broadcast systems. Not quite the same thing.)

> It's sort of an overlay network that performs VPN-like functions (and more) on and off the internet, and can tunnel anything from SMS to serial ports to raw ethernet to individual TCP & UDP ports or specific protocols like FTP.

O.o neat

> Bonding as such isn't implemented but it's on the radar.

Interesting, I can see how it's simultaneously not-so-relevant and yet would probably simplify things here and there.

Rarely anything new but I regularly need it for old manufacturing line equipment that just keeps running. 20 years is nothing for some of our assembly lines.

Basically all modern storage arrays and network devices rely on serial connections for first time setup. There are some advantages to this approach for the datacenter engineer if you aren't trying to do it at scale (where you'd likely be leveraging PXE). Once you have the speed and parity sorted out (often a pain), it's easy to copy/paste into a serial terminal which can make stuffing large configs into a new device relatively painless. Alternately, one can sometimes navigate through a simple menu system to configure IP addressing to complete initial config through some other means (SSH/HTTPS/etc).

Anyone supporting network gear in a datacenter has a baby blue Cisco serial cable somewhere in their bag.

It would be great then if Monoprice built those serial port cables for use on iPads via either Lightning AND usb-c 4.

Isn't it a different physical connector between Lightning and USB-C?

And there cetainly are Lightning-to-serial cables out there: https://redpark.com/products/serial-adapters/

Pretty much everything.

But particularly, servers, network equipment, industrial equipment.

Military equipment.

Love these features. Just wish it wasn't Windows.

Their other devices have had good Linux compatibility. Stock Debian works great on GPD MicroPC, for example.

Phrasing and grammar quirks on that website suggest that they should have spent a few extra bucks on an English-native writer or proofreader.

It fits with GPD's reputation of not caring much about quality control.

1) Being a native English speaker doesn't guarantee anyone knows how to write. 2) The vernacular style may be characteristic but it is not inferior, just unfamiliar.

I really wanted to like the GPD Pocket 2, after agonizing over buying it, but it turned out that I could not quite deal with the keyboard and was not adjusting to it. And so it sits, unused. I should probably dig it out and make it into a "in case of computational emergency ..." item of last resort.

If I could type on this for a while to see, I would likely buy it.

Keep the battery charged or it will fail and you will not be able to revive it

I spent money on planet computers gemini, which I have been happy with, but one thing that came to a surprise to me was how the whole keyboard layout ecosystem works. If going into a remote desktop, the remote machine needs to support the layout of whatever device you use. If you plan to use it for coding, better verify before relying on it.

Yeah, I have one too but the battery just sucks and Linux support is limited. Haven't used it much sadly...

I honestly didnt have issues with the battery. Regarding their debian version, it was usable enough, but not user friendly emough, and getting window manager, decoration to handle maximized was such a puzzle.

I ended up with android 8.1 without their menu bar, it is okay for writing mails, or light termux stuff.

but my main issues are missing keyboard layout on remote desktops and concerns about lagging security updates.

Looks like the port on the back needs 2 screws to put in the KVM vs the RS232 but that should be easily upgradeable to thumb screws.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdBgJOqIZPg

I have an iPad with a Magic Keyboard that looks quite similar if you squint (albeit a bit bigger). But I can probably do a fraction of the things on it that the GDP will be able to do. I wonder why? Better hardware? Makes you wonder.

I would think that an iPad would be faster and with someone designing/building USB C based serial port connector would be a better solution. Especially if a formal KVM Hypervisor was built to run on the iPad and you could load the Linux OS of your choice that way with drivers to support utilization of the USB-C port on the iPad for hardware connectivity/sensors.

wonder if it passes USB peripherals through that KVM module, although it's likely just wishful thinking.

One of the pain of having multiple computers, as owner of this device is likely, is to have to unplug and plug them everytime you switch

If I back them on Indiegogo, how long until I actually receive it physically, based on their shipping/manufacturing timeline from the first Win Max as well as the Pocket 1 + Pocket 2 models? Approximate timeline is fine

I really wish it had a thumb trackstick instead of that silly micro-touchpad.

If the modular IO port has an SCART module I will just die.

TL;DR: Tiny laptop with modules so it can act like a KVM (HDMI and USB) or do RS-232 serial, high res display, i7-1195G7 CPU and 16GB RAM, touch screen, stylus, 1TB SSD.

Couldn't find a price on it.

Looks like it ticks all the boxes for a NetOps dream pocket PC. If you have kind of big pockets.

Big pockets won't be a problem for the people buying this, given the likely asking price...

  Pocket 3 - 1195G7: $999
  Pocket 3 - 1195G7 + module: $1079
  Pocket 3 - N6000: $650
  Pocket 3 - N6000 + module: $730

DHL costs included. All IGG backers get a 4096 stylus.

From Twitter: https://twitter.com/softwincn/status/1453982767381762054

Site difficult to brows on mobile. Order button doesnt work. Nice features though, dont have to move around a screen when connecting to a server...

First the Framework Laptop and now this? Swappable modules seem to be in vogue (though they don't seem to be cross-compatible).

Makes me miss OQO.

Handheld PC should have the size of comfortable thumb typing. This is just mini laptop, not a handheld PC.

> Intel Pentium Silver N6000

Still Intel Atom. I will pass. My One Mix Yoga 2S has a proper Core processor.

There's two variants, if you didn't notice.

I didn't!! Somehow I missed it. Thanks.

Looks pretty handy for certain niches. I do wonder how irritating the keyboard layout is when you actually have to use it, since semicolon, colon, quotes, braces/brackets, etc, are located in odd spots.

Depends how often you use it. If you use it a lot you'll be used to it.

Though an 8" form factor probably means the keyboard will be too small to really want to use it when you have a bigger one handy.

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