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Comment by calderwoodra | Hacker News Reader

These glasses are super interesting - if laptops didn't have displays, their form factors could change considerably.

I'm imagining a rectangular shape with the track pad right aligned to the keyboard, rather than underneath.

There was this "SpaceTop" startup making a laptop with no screen [https://www.pcworld.com/article/1919392/spacetop-is-the-firs...], just a built in case for XR glasses like this (except the case was built into the body). They gave up and pivoted into AI...

I was thinking I'd want to make my own. How hard could it be? Just a phone, keyboard, and usb hub fitted into some framing. I tried 3-4 demos of XReal glasses though and (when I found a pair that wasn't broken, cable damage?) the FOV was much smaller than they seemed to be claiming. I think the bridge of my nose sticks out so the glasses are significantly farther away.

I still like the idea.

I would love that. Happy for it to be a thin client type of thing too. Imagine a plane where you have room for a keyboard but that is it.

Makes me think: with this your phone is fine. You can run a Linux on your Android then have a thin client. Lots of options!

The laptop form factor makes a laptop fragile. To the point where a 2 yr old XPS has been serviced 20 times (pro tip: get all the top level service options for 3 yrs it was about 30% added to the cost). And I have a probably 12 year old Dell desktop with no issues at all.

I'm on my third xps across 8+ years. 2 cases of services, the first one was a faulty keyboard on delivery and the second was a 1 meter drop into concrete that busted the screen.

Still looking for alternatives for my next one and thinking the System76. Gotta say though, I'm really happy with the xps model so far.

I was spinning a ThinkPad diagonal corners between my palms, fumbled it, my catch attempt put more energy in to it, landed on front right corner on the kitchen floor, bounced.

Nothing wrong with it, nothing broke, everything worked.

This was back when IBM still ran the brand.

I wouldn’t encourage anyone to try that with my HP x360.

There a a number of people removing their screens from Mac Airs and others, some of them using these glasses too.

I think I saw in here. In the meantime

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Screenless-MacBooks-masqueradi...

Actually tempted to buy one with a broken screen and ply around.

Amazing. Someone ran similar setup with a thinkpad workstation with deadscreen in studio, they fucked up screen replacement but ended up just using bottom chasis hooked up to a externaml monitor for the rest of school.

In my family, we always called those 'half-tops'.

There were some people doing something similar with the Vision Pro and detaching the monitor from a MacBook Air[0]. It looks really slick, but how well it actually works, especially given the drawbacks of the Vision Pro, is… up for interpretation.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUa_pPUbpGQ

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