(About) three weeks with the DevTerm
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Well, as the title states, i am now using the DevTerm for
about three weeks for nearly all of my mobile computing
needs. So, how does this odd little thing works out as
a potential replacement of my Thinkpad R60?
Well, lets start with the good
It sits in this sweet spot where it is small enough to be
ultra portable and light enough to be carried around all
day without noticing, but on the other hand big enough to
have way more screen real-estate than for example an
smarthone (as long as you don't count 'Phablets'), it also
has the additional bonus of an -in my opinion- quiet decent
keyboard. An absolutely great thing in my eyes are the use
of standard 18650 batteries. On my system a charge lasts
about 6 hours and the batteries are hot swappable, so with
a couple of additional batteries in your pocket the runtime
is quiet extendible.
Lets take a look at the bad side of things:
Its slow... way slower than anyone who has lived through the
time when 1 GB RAM and a 1 Ghz Processor was what the cool
kids had would anticipate. But, alas, most of todays software
tend to be on the supersized side of things and back in the
late 90s / early 00s nobody would have thought that an browser
may need more then a couple of MB RAM, but i digress...
Now, at last, there is this one UGLY thing...
.. the trackball! Its an absolute abomination that is hardly
usable and should only be used in the case of an absolute
emergency. ANY form of the crappiest, cheapest USB rodent one
might have pulled out of an dumpster is way better than this
tiny plastic ball of torture.
Sooo... am i happy with the DevTerm?
Well... yes, absolutely! On the one hand its a nice little
retro futuristic looking "toy", but on the other hand it is
very good at what it claims to be: An Development Terminal.
Running it with a bunch of tools out of the suckless space
the speed limitation is nearly gone, using dillo as a web
browser offers a very fast and lightweight option to browse
the smol web and for everything one might need more power it
is easy to simply ssh / vnc into bigger iron one might have
at hand. So, in a way this thing has some potential as a
kind of Chromebook for people who like text based interfaces
and the more unixey way to get things done. Yes indeed, i am
quiet happy with this thing.
