> I know it's a niche product, but I'd love a pocket sized Debian device with cellular, decent standby time, and a physical keyboard
yes they're called netbooks and x86 tablets but you may need a time machine back to 2015 to get one.
yes they're called netbooks and x86 tablets but you may need a time machine back to 2015 to get one.
GPD has a bunch, they are not exactly cheap though https://gpd.hk/product
But the idea was netbooks were the bottom end of the market and this other class were the same form factor but at the top end of the market.
The NetBook market was such a good one. It really is a pity the Microsoft killed off the spirit of it, and then Apple convinced everyone that pretty and expensive things without keyboards are nicer than cheap and practical things.
I do miss EeePCs. The death of the netbook was probably the biggest blow for desktop Linux becoming mainstream.
Netbooks were the ultimate portable productivity tool. Journalists would write about how they could take them on site and write about things while it happened. Students could type notes in class. I even saw a face painter at a kids party using an EeePC as part of their workflow.
Cheap laptops these days do now exist, but they suffer from drawbacks like weight, terrible battery life and poor performance. All problems that the EeePC didn’t have. And smartphones are fine for videos, but the lack of physical keyboard makes them impractical for typical productivity suits. The nearest modern competition to EeePCs are devices like MacBook Air and similar Windows devices. But they’re not cheap.
[1] https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2022/08/18/i-love-my-gpd-micro-p...