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Comment by dcw303 | Hacker News Reader

I'm waiting for a PocketCHIP (mainly to mess with pico8) that I preordered at the start of this month, and it has estimated shipping of November.

I wonder if the Chip Pro shipping in December will have any impact on my order.

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I have the PocketChip; great device. Recommended for sure. Together with come CHIPs you can do nice things. Sure for the same price as the PocketChip you can pick up a far more functional Android / Windows 10 tablet but this has a keyboard and you can replace anything in it yourself and do interesting hacking for both software and hardware.

Edit: (I bought the PocketChip for the introductory price; it's more expensive now but still cheap I find, especially as I would really like more people to make things like this... Is there anything else than the Pyra & this for handheld devices with a keyboard that you can actually order now and be quite sure you'll get it instead of throwing money away?)

I know it's cheap and all but the keyboard is hardly anything I would recommend for typing anything for more than 5 minutes. It's probably among the worst things out there to type on.

When I was googling the PocketCHIP I was surprised to find some random forum posts warning people NOT to peel the clear plastic coating off the keys, as apparently they hold them in place! That's certainly something I can imagine doing.

Oh yes, definitely heed that advice. I almost ripped mine off before I realized what it's there for. A very unfortunate omission on their part - there should be a warning in screaming caps on the device, or at least somewhere in the packaging.

I do not mind it that much. I have been writing games on it and it's fine. Sure it can be better, but for the price & flexibility I think it's good.

I got mine a few weeks ago and love it. Pico-8 is wonderful, I haven't done much besides mess with that.

Really? I find Pico-8 is barely playable with the keyboard. Are you using a bluetooth controller?

Would have been a hundred times better if they'd included a gameboy style dpad on the left for arrow keys and 2 proper buttons on the right

Still better than capacitive touch display based controls :) and I simply love playing with pico-8 on my commute from/to the office!

I plug a usb keyboard in, but more for coding. I don't mind playing the less twitchy stuff on the built in keyboard.

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