Lichee Console 4A: Mini Laptop with a RISC-V Processor and 7 inch display | Hacker News Reader

Lichee Console 4A: Mini Laptop with a RISC-V Processor and 7 inch display

liliputing.com

74 pointsrapnie47 comments

Almost every time I see some of those minidevices I feel an urge to buy it. And I have no idea for what use. I guess maybe it feels like a tech toy, and it somehow appeals to my inner child.

I used an original GPD Pocket as a travel laptop for a while. The tiny size and weight is really handy since you can just drop it in your bag and practically forget it's there.

The small screen size and cramped/weird layout KB made it too cumbersome to keep using it though. I wish there'd be laptops in the 9-11" range since that'd be a lot more workable I think.

MacBook Air 11“ from 2015 (last model) is still strong enough for me to do multi service docker compose local dev with various languages and databases. Big enough and powerful enough to also join video calls with multiple participants. Running Ubuntu/PopOS.

Two thumbs up for the MBA11. I use mine every day for everything non-programming. I liked it so much that I bought another one on eBay. I keep one plugged in, then swap out the other one when the battery goes low. I use Syncthing to synchronize useful files between the two. The full-size keyboard on them is wonderful. And the 2x USB-A ports, the mini-DP port, and the 3.5mm headphone jack. Awesome.

I tried running Linux/Ubutunu on them, but I gave up. The fan did not work out of the box, requiring a patch. Sleep on lid-closing was broken, requiring a hack. But the critical thing that made me give up on Linux was the broken trackpad. Palm rejection is terrible on Linux, and Linux has no support for pinch-zooming. I cannot live without pinch-zooming on a Mac, especially on an 11" screen.

When Apple stops supporting Big Sur (my MBA11 2013) and Catalina (my MBA11 2015), I'll try OpenCore Legacy Patcher. If that doesn't work, I'll probably just keep using the old MacOS versions.

>Linux has no support for pinch-zooming

On Apple hardware, or in general? Because I pinch-zoomed on your comment in Firefox on Linux.

On my Dell Latitude and Precision laptops, pinch-zooming does not work at all on Linux (Mint 21, MATE or Cinammon, w/ Firefox).

On the MBA11, I was slightly imprecise with that statement. I recall that pinch-zooming was bound to Ctrl+ on Firefox. But that is not what pinch-zooming does on MacOS. On MacOS, the zoom level remains unchanged (e.g. 170% for Hacker News) but the window content is smoothly zoomed in and out, without re-rendering the text or images. The zooming is so smooth and responsive that it feels like it's doing fractional percentages. There is almost no input lag from the movement of the fingers.

The Ctrl+ action, on the other hand, changes in discrete steps, (e.g. 100%, 110%, 125%, etc), and there is a noticeable lag caused by the rendering of the window content using the new zoom level. I find the Ctrl+ action to be unusable. (Addendum: On some web pages, I see an image that is too small. So I hit Ctrl+, which causes the image to become smaller. Argh. Pinch-zoom on MacOS causes the image to become bigger, because it doesn't change the zoom-level.)

For what it's worth, you can get the smooth behavior in Firefox by running it with "MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1". It's silly that it's not default, but it's there.

I'm running OLCP'd Ventura on MBA11 2014. Works just fine. Sonoma should be supported too, but haven't tried yet.

Disconnect from the Internet and you have a pretty capable e-typewriter.

Then I'd want an e-Ink screen I think. And probably a better (mechanical) keyboard.

Mechanical keyboard, I'm afraid, is unlikely to fit in a small device. There's always compromises to make between portability and comfort.

I'm waiting for someone to do something with a Pinephone keyboard. It looks perfect for hacking.

https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pinephone-pro-keyboard-...

Especially because it doesn't have a giant trackpad in front of the keyboard. For a Laptop, trackpads are important, for a typewriter, it's preferable for them to not exist. So the form factor looks great for that!

If it was cheap enough I'd be tempted to get for one of my teens to bring to school. Except they'd hate me for unleashing not only Linux, but Linux on a rather experimentally-new ISA.

Still tempted.

I feel a similar gut urge but I remember how these things are too small (type on) to actually be useful.

I mean they aren't too small to type on, I mean they are much bigger than a Blackberry was. I can imagine it being great for being on call since you can tether it carry it easily in a backpack. Remote fieldwork as well.

Would I daily drive it for coding? No. I can't even use crappy full-size laptop keyboards for long without pain, but as a very portable fully-feature device, this does have uses.

I'm thinking more along the lines of a raspberry pi that's instantly usable without messing with monitors, keyboards, mice and usb power supplies. I'd happily run Home Assistant on one of these. If I ever had to mess with it I could simply unplug it, take it downstairs and directly mess around with it. It would also survive a power cut, which my Pi doesn't.

I use my recently acquired uConsole (clockwork Pi) with the RISC-V module to teach myself RISC-V Assembly and so on. Once I'm done with it in that capacity, I'm going to use it for email.

All these mini-devices get evaluated on the basis of whether they can be, eventually used for basic e-mail.

It's weird to publish an image that is horizontally mirrored (look at where the cursor keys are) without comment or just fixing it. Cute machine though.

At the same time, the wallpaper says "Sipeed" instead of something mirrored like "beeqiS". Weird...

Contents of the display are often added after the fact in marketing materials. The person adding the wallpaper probably just didn’t notice the photo was flipped.

That thing looks so adorable... except for that Windows key which sticks out like a sore thumb.

16GB RAM feels quite generous, while the 1280x800 resolution is barely enough.

I haven't torn the machine down, obviously, but it seems like RAM replacement would be harder than using that HDMI port on the side when higher resolution is needed.

It’s only a 7 inch screen, it works out to 216 PPI which is the same as my M1 iMac

Yes, but if you go to the Wild Wild Web you'd soon find out that designers don't test their websites anymore with low resolutions and many many of them are unusable as important features are obscured by other elements flowing into them.

7" is a little small for typing, but it's so adorable.

What I really want is a slightly larger 11-12" mini laptop that would be the spiritual successor to the ThinkPad X220 which is to me the gold standard for portable and useful machines.

Same screen size as the original EEE 701, only in a smaller case. That was only just touch-typable, in my experience.

What I'd worry about with this is the weight of the thing. Not too heavy, too light - you kinda want something with a little bit of inertia so it doesn't scoot across the desk while you're typing on it.

There's the GPD Win Max 2[1] which is 10.1" or the Pocket 3[2] at 8". I have the Pocket 3 and the keyboard, while serviceable, is not good enough for day-to-day use. I also briefly had a Max 2 and the keyboard was much better, but still nowhere near as good as the X220.

[1] https://gpd.hk/gpdwinmax2

[2] https://gpd.hk/gpdpocket3

I had an 11" Chromebook for many years and loved it. Light as a feather, battery lasted a day and was perfectly functional for gmail, g docs, reading wikipedia or whatever other basic stuff. A perfect kids computer for <$200.

> 7" is a little small for typing, but it's so adorable.

Too small for a netbook / mini laptop, period.

If this came with ~10..12" (max) display, I'd be very tempted. 7".. will have some uses but not for me.

Specs look pretty similar to the Pinebook Pro, except that it's RISC-V.

Pinebook Pro would have been useful if not for the abysmal keyboard quality.

I wonder about this one.

The Pinebook Pro has a GPU with software support.

What's wrong with Pinebook Pro's keyboard? I have one of those, and the keyboard works just fine.

> Pinebook Pro would have been useful if not for the abysmal keyboard quality.

Really? I'm not exaggerating, when I say it's my second favorite laptop keyboard, only beat by the old thinkpad ones.

Note that it's "on track to begin shipping soon" and "prices are expected to start at $299", so it's not like you can just already buy one.

I hope someone remembers to post to HN when they are _actually_ available for purchase and reviews are up for it :)

What would make it for me is if this had a SIM slot (or at least a way to use a USB port to host the SIM?) and basic speaker / microphone for replacing some smartphone usages.

1.5" -- watch

2.7" -- Gameboy

4" -- Smaller old phone

6" -- Larger phone

7" -- Tablet

11" -- Netbook

13" -- Today's typical laptops

15" -- Traditional laptop

17" -- Desktop replacement laptop

22" -- Small Desktop screens.

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7" is really small for a laptop form factor. Could be interesting though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_NanoNote

Less ridiculously https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5

The Psions were reasonably successful too. My hunch is we are going to experience a slow rediscovery of the benefits of non touch interfaces.

The amount it costs to build a mechanical interface, compared with the absurdly cheap costs of capacitive sensors (which can be found in $0.50 microcontrollers run across a PCB for basically free), means that mechanical interfaces are pretty much dead IMO.

Mechanical interfaces are superior, yes. But touch-capacitive is so cheap that I don't think we'd ever go back.

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Honestly, the Blackberry, Palm Centro, LG Optimus Enlighten were all good items I've used personally. The speed at which I could type / move around on those systems is absurdly faster than the slow, inaccurate, capacitive screens of today.

But I know a thing or two about manufacturing costs. Capacitive is just too cheap to compete against.

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Resistive screens (Gameboy DS bottom touchscreen) have benefits for relatively simplicity and better accuracy in my experience. But you lose on pinch-to-zoom or other multi-digit tracking. There's just been more work on capacitive touch that its the cheapest way to implement things today in practice.

Nah, we're just in an weird valley right now where users still see capacitive touch screens as "ooh fancy new better" and so wouldn't consider paying more for mechanical. But I expect that will eventually wear off and some consumers (not the majority, but some) will be willing to pay the premium for mechanical things.

Especially in things like cars, where "giant ipad centre console" for a long time was some sort of luxury-differentiator, when in fact it's a terrible, distracting, cost cutting measure. At some point the return of mechanical knobs and switches -- done stylishly and ergonomically -- will become the luxury signifier instead.

It's the #1 thing turning me off buying any Tesla, and I know I'm not the only one.

Slapping a touch screen in something to replace physical interfaces tells me a company not only cheaped out on components, but on design & UX research. It's hard work to design and lay out quality mechanical components.

Just yesterday had occasion to use a battered old blackberry passport with physical keyboard. To me undoubtedly superior for text input compared to current devices.

IMO the issue is that a 7 inch keyboard is too small to comfortably touch-type on, but too large to comfortably thumb-type on. It's in a weird middle area.

> 7" is really small for a laptop form factor.

It certainly is for "normal" laptop uses, but I would consider that rather a tool for tasks that require a real computer with a real OS and keyboard rather than a tablet with all its limitations. Unfortunately the lack of Ethernet port is quite a limitation in that context.

20": Dilbert's dream computer in 1997. I can't find the strip, unfortunately

As a long time thinkpad user the first thing that stood out to me from looking at this is wondering if there is a bios option to correct the flipped Fn and Ctrl buttons.

The netbook returns

I had a Dell netbook that I bought for $400 that got me through grad school. I loved that machine. Emacs and LaTeX all day.

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