this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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I'm not sure on Starlab's background or people's stance on them, but I think this looks pretty nice.
Coreboot, 3:2 aspect ratio, magnetic keyboard, aluminium finish, I'd say makes this a pretty compelling alternative to a surface. Specs aren't super beefy, but I don't think they need to be in this form factor. Introductory price on this seems nice, too.
And like a Surface, it puts a desktop OS onto a tablet, basically repeating Microsoft's mistake.
There's a difference between "not beefy" and a super crappy 1.00GHz Intel N200. A hardware OEM just needs to go to AMD and pick off the shelf whatever is the closest thing to Steam Deck's CPU.
Desktop OS on a tablet is fine and even preferred depending on what you want it for.
I have a surface and don't mind using full windows that way.
I agree with you. I got a surface go for some time because I wanted to travel with a mini computer that could do some coding with my preferred IDE, document editing, web browsing and a couple other tasks like a computer, even if it was slower.
At the same time it being a tablet was also very useful to watch movies in other rooms!
I used the stylus only because I was curious, but didn't used it more than a couple of weeks
If the use case is to use a tablet as a tablet, then a desktop OS is not fine. Source: Me and my Surface Pro 7 which is unusable without the type cover.
Gnome shell works well on my vivo as either a tablet or with the keyboard.
The DE itself is less of a problem than the applications. On my Steam Deck in game mode I use Angelfish as web browser because all the mainstream browsers are just bad for touch controls compared to ones specifically designed for touch. You see a similar complaint in Windows forums were they sag that original Edge was better for tablets than Chromium Edge.
Cool touch applications like Krita Gemini and Calligra Gemini died because "fuck that touch trend, fuck QtQuick, GTK forever". Now we're stuck with applications that need a touchpad or mouse...
Wut... GTK is one of the very few touch friendly toolkits on *nixen. And neither of those apps were ever GTK.
Of course they were never on GTK because at that time GTK was absolutely useless for anything touch and it didn't really change until libhandy became libadwaita and kinda-sorta became aligned with GTK but is also not part of GTK proper. Gimp is not touch-friendly. Modern Krita somewhat is, Krita Gemini totally was.
I also have a surface pro 7, how is it any less usable without the type cover than any other tablet without one?
Most Windows applications work like ass with touch. Most iPad and Android apps work best with touch.
I mean sure, but you have the flexibility of a fully featured computer. You could run Android apps on it if you really wanted that UX.
In my experience all that really means is that you're forced to use the stylus for precise taps or right click functionality sometimes.
Same flexibility would be there if the default OS was different. The same PC with Android-x86 would just as capable of booting other systems but the default experience would be touch (finger) friendly.
Cool. There is no stylus included, though.
No, but there is a virtual touchpad included in Windows that accomplishes the same thing. Different use cases exist and it sounds like an Android tablet fits yours better.
No Android-x86 tablets exist.
Well the desktop OS is what made me choose a Surface Go 1 as my main computer. And now that I've switched to Linux (Fedora), I'm even more thankful that you could apply every tutorial you found on the web for that tablet.
Well, presumably the Linux apps are a feature for the target audience. In terms of the OS UX itself, if you had never seen GNOME before, would you call it a desktop or a tablet UI?
I'd definitely prefer to have gone the AMD route for these, but N200 isn't that awful, no? At least comparable to some Skylake gens? Not that that's amazing in the modern day, but I'd say still capable enough with the included specs to not be too bogged down by some of the lighter distros.
Better off with a Chromebook 10/10 times if you need something low powered, but I think it's an interesting entry to the hardware space.
I doubt it's powerful enough to play back 4k videos smoothly and 1080p stretched to the native resolution doesn't look super great. If AMD didn't offer a vastly better alternative at similar cost, fine, but Ryzen Z1 and such are available.
I have an N100 box running as my Plex server. It has no problem transcoding multiple 4k videos at once. This processor is no M2 but it isn’t really a slouch either.
At 1 GHz? Sure about that? Even if my performance assumptions are off: something like the Steam Deck CPU surely still beats it, especially in low power.
It can clock up to 3.7 GHz and has a decent GPU for an Intel one. All I can say for sure is that it keeps up just fine.
I see no cooling vents, so apparently passive cooling only and massive downclocking. Still think an AMD chip would have been better.