!GPD Win 1 review
---
agk's diary
5 April 2022 @ 03:40 UTC
---
written on GPD Win 1
at kitchen table after driving home from the city
where I got a respectable B on a Med-Surg exam
---

Should I write about Cassie's bad reinfection with
COVID, Grandpa's stroke, or my motorcycle's bad
front fork seals? Nope! I'll write about using a
five-year-old Win10 laptop the size of a smartphone
as my main computer.

OS: Windows 10 Home ver.1803 (end of life)
Resolution: 5.5" 1280x720 16:9
CPU: Intel Atom x7-Z8750 @ 1.6GHz
Memory: 1808MiB / 3410MiB

Everyday use
------------
Most of what I do in school is login to Canvas LMS
to watch Yuja Media videos of lectures. I take
notes with a Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen. On
the tiny laptop I use Seamonkey browser to look at
the www. I wish Seamonkey had an adblocker. I look
at busy webpages with frogfind.com to approximate
ad-free "reader view," and youtube with a piped or
invidious proxy.

Ctrl-l puts the cursor in the URL bar, Ctrl-t opens
a new tab, Ctrl-w closes a tab, Shift-Ctrl-t re-
opens a closed tab, Backsp goes back in browsing
history, Ctrl-Tab cycles through tabs, F5 reloads,
+ zooms in, - zooms out, Ctrl-q quits.

Seamonkey's email client connects me to an account
on my domain, managed by migadu. Seamonkey's IRC
client connects me to my Russian friends. Seamonkey
has USENET and RSS clients!

The tiny laptop needs Windows to drive its shoulder
buttons (which function as mouse buttons) and joy-
sticks (which function as mouse and scroll wheel).

Shortcuts make Windows easier to use: Win-r runs a
program by name, Win-d shows the desktop, Win-x
invokes the "expert" menu, Win-x u u shuts down,
Alt-Tab switches between running programs, Shift-
Insert pastes highlighted text---useful in puTTY
or anywhere Ctrl-x/Ctrl-c/Ctrl-v isn't available to
cut and paste. I wish I knew how to make new win-
dows open maximized.

I login to SDF with puTTY, Alt-Enter to fullscreen,
multiplex with tmux. This is where I write with
nano, read gopher (with sdf's gopher), chat a with
com, email with mutt, browse www with lynx, write
and use use shell scripts, etc.

In tmux, Ctrl-b " splits the window into superior
and inferior panes, Ctrl-b % splits it into side-
by-side panes. Ctrl-b arrow key cycles the cursor
between panes.

Other applications I use on the little guy
------------------------------------------
Mupdf's my favorite pdf/epub viewer. h displays a
file full height, w full width, [ and ] rotate,
230g goes to page 230. Scroll up and down with
arrow keys or Space/b. + zooms in, - zooms out.
q quits.

I use LibreOffice to submit papers written in nano
as APA-formatted .docx files and turn class power-
points into pdfs.

Lagrange is a great gopher/gemini browser. Muscle-
memory shortcuts from Seamonkey/most www browsers
work, except Backsp. History navigation is with
Alt-arrow keys.

DeepL's desktop application translates text from
anywhere: highlight; Ctrl-c c pulls text into
DeepL and translates. Seamonkey and Lagrange have
translation built in, but DeepL's quicker.

I occasionally use other applications: zim (a
personal wiki notebook) to write, VLC to stream
internet radio, synctrayzor to transfer files,
qbittorrent and youtube-dlg to download stuff.

In closing
----------
It's not very useful away from wifi. I might some
day add more autonomy with [email protected]'s
offpunk, [email protected]'s rover, or a modified
[email protected]'s "not always online" script. No
hurry, though.

I use a Pinebook Pro for some classwork, and Zoom
teleconference with an iPad. For everything else,
palmtop computing's real nice.