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Comment by marklar423 | Hacker News Reader

I love the look, but can someone explain to me what sort of things you would do with a computer of this form factor? Why do people keep building them? Is is just looks? Or is there something they're good at.

To be clear, I'm not looking for something you can't do already (your phone does everything), but something that a cyberdeck computer would _excel_ at.

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It's a cheap small device that's extremely portable. When I was doing more random tech support things, I'd probably try to keep one in the backpack because it's relatively tiny. It can handle boot media, pxe, testing random hardware, connecting to networks you need, etc. It would come useful when I don't have a laptop / didn't expect to need to do work, but it turns out I'd really like my laptop right now. At that size, I'd just never take it out / leave behind.

Although with the new, more powerful phones I could also carry a small USB dock instead. I've done random emergency work on N900 before.

This comes up in response to this hobby frequently, and the answer is pretty simple- it does whatever you want. There are pretty much an endless variety of cyberdecks, and some are more useful that others. Even the ones that are for different aesthetics go on to inspire specific builds.

I think you're asking the question in good faith, but it's a bit like looking at an Arduino, Raspberry Pi 2040, or Raspberry Pi 4B and asking, "what can these do that an Intel laptop can't do better?"

Seems like it could work well to run a music tracker.

renoise would run like a wild mustang on this thing

I too would like to know what use these things have?

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