Pinetab – 10.1″ Linux Tablet with Detached Backlit Keyboard

Also one of their older W models that will only run on battery if a standard 90W power supply is connected and will only charge the battery if the device is off. Running on external power is only supported with the 135W or (stock) 170W PSU.

You have 60W chargers usually for systems with max power draw of the CPU+GPU that can reach around 200W peak and in the mid to high 1XXW sustained if you have a DTR/high-performance “mobile” CPU + dGPU.

Even if your laptop comes with a 90W charger it’s still a problem because it’s not enough to power a 65W series H CPU and a high end GPU that draws another 80-120W.

Most laptops will always use the battery directly and trickle charge it due to the power draw.

Power(hungry)ful modern gaming/DTR style laptops can use both concurrently, heck older gaming laptops used to come with multiple power supplies that were needed simply because even the battery wasn’t enough at the time to serve as a buffer, so you had to plug in 2 power adapters to power the laptop fully.

Even without this constraint having a single power path is cheaper and simpler to design so most manufacturers just only draw from the battery and have a separate charging circuit that charges it without having to add power balancing and switching circuitry.

IBM thinkpads used to advertise that you can switch the battery while the laptop was plugged into the charger most laptops of that period didn’t support this either.

If you go even further it was even more of a headache because older laptops used LiPo batteries which were even more finicky.

I was rudely surprised by my first Core 2-era machine that wouldn't boot without a battery installed, because prior to that, from Pentium-based Toughbooks back to the 486-based Noteflex back to various 8088 and even pre-x86 machines (PC8201A, club100 represent!), they were all absolutely fine running from the power inlet alone with no battery.

The Zenith MiniSport was the sole exception because the power jack was actually physically on the battery, but you could still gut an old dead battery and make a dummy, and it would run from the brick just fine. (This is documented in the very first issue of Brian Mork's excellent Minisport Laptop Hacker zine, available wherever fine textfiles are sold.)

Of course you should go for what is easier for you, and the pinetab does sound easier, however I'd argue that it is not cleaner.

Separating the screen and main unit will allow for a more serviceable solution, changing either piece if it breaks, or upgrading the main unit if you need more power/different connectivity.

The timer switch I grabbed to do my proof of concept only has 15min resolution (it's a weird old mechanical one where you move plastic pins in the stop/start time rings). I recall setting it to 45mins because the docs says the iPad gets 80% charge in 1 hour, and it'd occasionally run down and switch off, so I bumped it up to 1hr and haven't touched it since.

I just checked now, it charged for an hour overnight finishing ~10.5 hours ago, and is currently saying 59% charge. I honestly have no idea how low or high the charge level gets, just that I haven't needed to wake it back up from a shutdown in over 4 years...

I've come to doubt the details there are important. Don't leave it on charge 24x7, that'll kill it fairly quickly (~9 months in one data point of mine). Charge it long enough and regularly enough to keep it running, but at the low end of that spectrum. Keep in mind my goal here is less "extend the life of the battery", and more " prevent the battery from swelling up and damaging the device/catching fire", but I suspect there's a fair bit of crossover between those goals, since I've not needed to increase the charge time in response to any battery capacity decrease over 5 years (which in retrospect surprises me somewhat).

If I was aiming to maintain the best possible range in an electric vehicle, I'd probably pay much more attention to max charge and min discharge levels, but "the simplest possible thing" has been working well enough for me to just leave it alone.

If it dies on me tomorrow, I'll be happy enough with the use I got out of it and the tradeoff of time I spent futzing with it.

(Note: I'm also quite familiar with abusing LiPo batteries way past safe limits, I raced FPV quadcopters 5-6 years back, and in my worst excesses, I'd be aiming to completely drain a flight pack in ~2 minutes. They'd end up too hot to touch, and start to decline to the point of not being race competitive within 20 or 25 cycles. They'd also catch into unextinguishable fire in big crashes and occasionally while charging. I have a healthy fear/respect of high capacity and high current LiPo batteries...)

Yeah missed the Kanban part

The biggest difference is that the Magic Keyboard never fails. Not like it works 95% of the time or even 99% of the time. 100% of the time it types when you expect it to, connects when you want it to, disconnects easily, doesn’t double inputs or skip inputs. There’s nothing I would change about it.

EDIT: it is indeed gated by some vague heuristics[1].

>Buyers don't always have the option to complete their purchases without using or creating a PayPal account. This option is presented based on several risk factors, including but not limited to the buyer's PayPal purchase history, PayPal cookies stored on the buyer's computer, the buyer's location, or a credit assessment.

[1] https://www.paypal.com/uk/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-accept-...

I didn't down vote either your prior post or this one. I value durable things. My 8ish year old desktop just died. Both my phone and my laptop are 5 years old. On the other hand I see the value in cheap things that will be affordable to all made by small distributors that value our freedom to use our devices. Everything in life is some degree of trade off and I see room for this one.