The problem is not making these things available but the impulsive buyers who get these with no project in mind. All these soc are not really meant to replace a daily driver but be project specific and only imagination is the blocker here.

Personally I applaud the trend of making these devices. They will inspire countless future hackers the way a lot of us have been inspired before.

It very much looks like a cool toy and I am tempted to get one, but that's exactly what would happen to mine. And I expect that a significant portion of people who purchase it will also play with it for a couple hours and then never touch it again. Which makes me kind of upset that it's being manufactured. Feels like it's just encouraging creating more plastic/electronics waste.

Same here - on the other hand I'm thinking this would be the perfect type of computer for my kid to inherit from me (if I ever have one of those). It feels like the right format, intentionally hackable, open about how it works etc.

It feels closer to the Ataris' and Amigas' etc that many of use grew up with. Even if it doesn't live up to that kind of flexibility, it's far better than the damage of handing a kid an android or iOS "appliance".

I mean, it looks like a nice tool if you take it to debug on-site devices.

I would buy something like this if it had HDMI and VGA in, and could let me use as a portable console to plug into machines.

I recently picked up a Motorola LapDock from eBay. It was originally used as a keyboard, trackpad, and screen in a laptop format for the Atrix smartphone, but with some converter cables, you can plug into any machine with HDMI and USB and use it exactly as you describe. It's finicky, but works well enough to be useful. Total cost for the LapDock and cables was under $100.

Totally. A portable KVM/crash cart could be useful.

take a look at NexDock - laptop form factor, without the innards. just a keyboard, trackpad, screen, and battery waiting to connect to a phone, server rack, pi, or what have you.

That's pretty cool. I wonder how hard it would be to add USB-C docking capability to an old server in my homelab. Seems like a graphics card with Virtual Link USB-C [0] would be ideal, but maybe overkill. There are some other options [1] but it's not clear to me how much graphic horsepower you need. Definitely a VGA-only motherboard is not gonna cut it...

[0] https://uploadvr.com/every-virtuallink-gpu/

[1] https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/20/add-usb-c-with-...

I second this, have one of the Touch models - the build quality is great. Yes it works with my Samsung on which I have Ubuntu via VNC running on the phone. But also and more useful for me is it has HDMI in and USB out for keyboard and mouse, works perfectly for when you need a kvm setup. did I say the build quality is great?...

Only downside is the piece of junk trackpad that registers registering itself as a mouse and not a trackpad...resulting in no palm-rejection and crappy gesture functionality.

$270 is a lot for an empty laptop.

Seems like the Pinebook guys could make a decent competitor.

You can order a USB HDMI capture dongle for around USD 10 on AliExpress, e.g., from AIXXCO. It's not perfect but it should suffice to setup or debug a headless system. TinyPilot uses such a dongle for server KVM purposes.

So much this. I want a display, a VGA in, a keyboard and something that is capable of running a terminal and a switch for VGA in and the built-in Raspberry/Odroid/whatever. I would pay anything up to $500-600.

Found nothing so far.

Edit: forgot RJ45.

I mean this thing has plenty of room in the case and should be compatible with TinyPilot: https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot/

It's not a turn-key solution, but it's not that far off.

Yeah RJ45 is a HUGE miss on modern laptops. Nothing like a fast stable wired connection.

I think that’d be the use of it. Quick and simple stuff that you otherwise don’t want to configure a laptop around performing. It’s not a “use this for hours at a time” and daily driver. Not sure of the breadth of that use case.

Definitely think that's where they will be going. For most of us being the sort of dev that uses this sort of thing is a fantasy. For the very few it's a reality chances are they've already got something half as useful, 20x the price that will do one or 2 critical things this can't, and most will have not interest in creating and add-on so it can do them.