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Warning: this post is an old text (at least 2 years old, I think). I
have got a proper desktop at work after that (and the mentioned laptop
died after that - now I have a Lenovo x260 instead) and I replaced the
Compute Stick with the ODOID but the rest of the text is still valid,
unfortunately.
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I use a 17" laptop at work. I have got it from a previous user who
needed it for a different use thus it is not the best machine for my
needs. I use it mostly as a desktop with an external 24" screen
(1920x1200), a keyboard (the Das Keyboard), and the mouse (an ordinary
old IBM/Lenovo infrared mouse) attached. I use it sometimes as a
laptop. But I recently computed that it was for about 1% of time.
At home I use desktop(s). For the most of work I still use a SGI O2
with 1600x1024 screen and for modern stuff (complicated or secure www
browsing, interfacing modern USB devices) I have the Intel Compute
Stick. There are more desktop machines around (a Power Macintosh 6100,
SGI Indigo, SGI Indy, iMac G5) but on daily basis I use the two
mentioned above. I never tried to analyse the time that I divide
between them but now it can be around 5:1.
There are other devices at home but an Android tablet is used just for
gaming and for journal reading and the PDAs are used to write posts
like this text (often in the bed) and for a light reading (I use
Plucker to offline reading of some sites).
But I still use desktop more time than the all others combined.
The "most of work" which I don on my O2 includes: texts writing/LaTeX
typesetting, most of WWW browsing (Links/Lynx), programming and
computing, photos viewing and music playing. For obvious reasons I do
not do online shopping here.
There is also the Ubuntu Tablet. It was meant as a desktop replacement
but it is still less comfortable than my oldest desktop:
- UI is far inferior to any current desktop (the Unity 8 still lacks
basic features like virtual desktops, keyboard control of window sizes
and positions or customisation of screen fonts,...)
- limited possibilities to use so-called "legacy applications" (they
are normal ones that are available on the Linux desktops: a Firefox,
the LibreOffice) and there are compatibility issues, ergonomic
issues,...
- limited range of compatible monitors (none of my home LCDs is
compatible, for example)
- limited range of available software (no Paraview, for example)
- limited USB host functionality (one can connect a keyboard and a
mouse but nothing more)
- limited computing power (CPU speed and RAM size): it is subjectively
much slower than a Intel-Atom based Compute Stick which is comparable
it terms of CPU MHz and RAM size (and for actual number crunching it is
slower, too).
Thus the Ubuntu tablet has currently no potential to replace any of my
desktops. And I was just one or two occasions this year to use it
during traveling. So the time that I spend while using it is very
limited.