<story><title>Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/meet-an-open-source-pc-that-can-fit-in-your-pocket</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hwbehrens</author><text>Are there any devices that fit the bill of an &amp;quot;anti-laptop&amp;quot;? I despise working on tiny (&amp;lt;27&amp;quot;) screens, but I often need to work both from home and from the office. Currently I have a docking station in each location and move a laptop between them. However, I never ever open the laptop or use it on battery power.&lt;p&gt;It seems silly that most of the volume and weight of the device I carry around daily are totally unused, and that most of the tradeoffs it makes are irrelevant to me, but most small desktop machines are either too large or too slow (to meet a price point, presumably?). None that I know of is designed to operate from a single Thunderbolt cable like a docked laptop can.&lt;p&gt;Does such a product exist? I understand that this is a small fraction of a fraction of a use case, and until recently connectivity options weren&amp;#x27;t really there to support such a device, but I think there is some promise in this idea.&lt;p&gt;The Framework desktop case seems to come the closest so far, but it still doesn&amp;#x27;t (I think?) address the single-cable connectivity question. There&amp;#x27;s not too much info about it on the website so I couldn&amp;#x27;t answer all my questions about it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>LeifCarrotson</author><text>An NUC or similar SFF desktop PC seem to be pretty close to your requirements. Without an optical drive and without any spinning rust media, they&amp;#x27;re pretty durable. I use a lot of fanless PCs from OnLogic, Cincoze, and Neousys in industrial control panels...they have &amp;#x27;rugged&amp;#x27; models that are designed to mount inside heavy equipment or prototype vehicles that you could probably use as a hammer, but even a consumer NUC will be fine in a backpack.&lt;p&gt;The form factor is typically more boxy, like 5x5x2&amp;quot; rather than 9x12x1&amp;quot;, so they&amp;#x27;ll fit easily into a backpack but not so well in a briefcase. You can get them with laptop processors and passive cooling or the worst of both worlds - a whiny little centrifugal laptop fan, or you can get a luxuriously quiet 140mm desktop fan, desktop-grade processor and graphics that will blow any ultrabook out of the water.&lt;p&gt;However, they&amp;#x27;re not typically oriented for single-cable-connectivity. Why is it such a big deal to plug in one cable for the power supply and either a couple for the mouse, keyboard, and monitor, or one for the Thunderbolt hub?</text></comment>
<story><title>Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/meet-an-open-source-pc-that-can-fit-in-your-pocket</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hwbehrens</author><text>Are there any devices that fit the bill of an &amp;quot;anti-laptop&amp;quot;? I despise working on tiny (&amp;lt;27&amp;quot;) screens, but I often need to work both from home and from the office. Currently I have a docking station in each location and move a laptop between them. However, I never ever open the laptop or use it on battery power.&lt;p&gt;It seems silly that most of the volume and weight of the device I carry around daily are totally unused, and that most of the tradeoffs it makes are irrelevant to me, but most small desktop machines are either too large or too slow (to meet a price point, presumably?). None that I know of is designed to operate from a single Thunderbolt cable like a docked laptop can.&lt;p&gt;Does such a product exist? I understand that this is a small fraction of a fraction of a use case, and until recently connectivity options weren&amp;#x27;t really there to support such a device, but I think there is some promise in this idea.&lt;p&gt;The Framework desktop case seems to come the closest so far, but it still doesn&amp;#x27;t (I think?) address the single-cable connectivity question. There&amp;#x27;s not too much info about it on the website so I couldn&amp;#x27;t answer all my questions about it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>RobertRoberts</author><text>Consider the Lenovo Nano: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lenovo.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;c&amp;#x2F;desktops&amp;#x2F;thinkcentre&amp;#x2F;m-nano-series&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lenovo.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;c&amp;#x2F;desktops&amp;#x2F;thinkcentre&amp;#x2F;m-nano-s...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have a couple of the ThinkCentre Nano computers. They are tiny, a fat fit for a pocket, but easily transported if you wanted to. AMD Ryzen processor and plenty of ram with SSD.&lt;p&gt;Still need power though... and I am not crazy about the power connector though (seems too proprietary) but it seems very sturdy at least.</text></comment>