Are there any devices that fit the bill of an "anti-laptop"? I despise working on tiny (<27") 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.
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.
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't really there to support such a device, but I think there is some promise in this idea.
The Framework desktop case seems to come the closest so far, but it still doesn't (I think?) address the single-cable connectivity question. There's not too much info about it on the website so I couldn't answer all my questions about it.
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're pretty durable. I use a lot of fanless PCs from OnLogic, Cincoze, and Neousys in industrial control panels...they have 'rugged' 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.
The form factor is typically more boxy, like 5x5x2" rather than 9x12x1", so they'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.
However, they'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?
I kinda think that the Steam Deck and the other new handheld gaming PCs are the new incarnation of the netbook. Powerful enough to be useful, with a usable screen, you just need a mouse and keyboard to do basic tasks. Plug in a monitor, you're all set.
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.
Still need power though... and I am not crazy about the power connector though (seems too proprietary) but it seems very sturdy at least.
It's not a single-cable device, but it has a lot of ports. It runs a slow processor, has only 4G of RAM and 128G of storage...and reviews of previous generations have not been kind.
My personal tiny PC lust object is the Ockel Sirius A Pro:
It's six years old now?, and runs an Atom processor...and they're asking USD$800 for one, but it's got 8 gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of storage, and has a battery and 1080p touch display. Hopelessly underpowered and overpriced, I still desperately want one.
EDIT: Finally, there's the MeLE Quieter3Q, available on Amazon. See the reviews on YouTube.
> None that I know of is designed to operate from a single Thunderbolt cable like a docked laptop can.
The Mac Mini is basically exactly this, with one exception, which is power. I really wish this existed as well. An M2 Mac Mini that supported being powered over TB with PD, would be perfect for me, because I have multiple work locations that each have monitors that provide 90W of PD power over TB, and I could simply drop it in my bag.
Again, not a single-cable system, but CappuccinoPC make a range of Mini-ITX, fanless, and other small-form-factor PCs and devices.
They're full-featured computers, they're portable. They typically have multiple connectors, however, and they don't have integrated battery storage, though that's something you might be able to add modularly at this point.
I see why this is tricky, because I'd argue a Mac Mini fulfils that requirement - but it doesn't do the power delivery aspect. If you ignore the power requirements it becomes much easier.
It'd be a small market for sure, which is why I don't think you see it. Personally I'd maybe grab a MacBook Air or something as that is likely the best
"power to weight" ratio for a laptop.
Your mention of the Framework desktop case seems like it would work no? As it can be powered over USB-C? Or does it not do output over the same port?
I've kicked around the idea for a while of a baggable computer, in the sense that the components might fit into a satchel or messenger bag, but be connectable to a larger set of I/O devices (keyboard, mouse, display) as needed.
For the past year and a half I've been using the Onyx BOOX Max Lumi e-ink tablet. It's sized large enough at 13" to be a very useful display. As an Android device, it ... suffers many of the limitations of same (see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32569871>).
But paired with a Real Computer, a keyboard, and a mouse or trackball, plus battery/power supply and maybe external disk storage ... it could be interesting. Those might fit into different pockets of a bag, though this would leave the problem of thermal management (cloth-swathed electronics have poor heat conduction characteristics).
Different components could be swapped out at will. And the device (or its storage) could be paired with a Real Desktop Computer (or work-in-process synched to same or some common storage pool) as needed.
The key constraints for a laptop itself are the fact that the keyboard and screen must accommodate a human's hands and eyes, and provisioning sufficient battery capacity. Busting a few of those constraints for more flexible offerings ... might shake up the concept a bit.
For modern generative computing, web browsing is typically the biggest load. I've used 10--15 y.o. (or older) hardware quite usefully for most of my principle tasks except Web access, which ... is kind of sad on the face of it. Even an older Android tablet runs scripts (generally awk or python) reasonably well. Runtime is about 1/10 the performance of a desktop, possibly worse, but for small working data sets, that's rarely an issue. E.g., I can run awk with effectively the same responsiveness on many thousands of rows of data in either environment. I did find that JSON parsing was notably slower (10--15s on the tablet vs. sub-second response on desktop) for typical workloads, though even that was an issue only in high-repetition development or content-search contexts.
There are docks that let you use your phone as the computing device. Depending on how much power you need, that would probably be good enough for most tasks.
My million dollar idea is that I take my keyboard with me. My preferred layout, keycaps, switches, etc. Inside is something like a Ryzen APU, upgradeable / swappable, with an internal battery. It has display outputs and can easily be paired to a tablet or phone for display, perhaps wirelessly, possibly harnessing the display device's processing power as well.
People that want this are buying M1 macbooks with broken screens on ebay and simply removing the screen. I'm not sure you could really do this without the battery to make a much smaller size as modern laptops rely on the battery for peak power delivery instead of using a larger power supply.
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.
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't really there to support such a device, but I think there is some promise in this idea.
The Framework desktop case seems to come the closest so far, but it still doesn't (I think?) address the single-cable connectivity question. There's not too much info about it on the website so I couldn't answer all my questions about it.