Sometimes we do things just for “the love of the game” and learn something along the way but I couldn’t help scratching my head the entire time while reading this
https://mm-dev.rocks/posts/my-working-environment/intro/
I could see something like a macbook laptop sans screen being useful if it was like, perma wired into the electronics enclosure in a cabinet on a boat and plugged into an existing monitor/keyboard/touchpad... Maybe a tiny two way HDMI KVM switch to toggle between it and an existing x86-64 small computer?
His current setup doesn't look bad to me from an ergonomic standpoint. Displays are fully articulated in all directions and probably at eye level, and keyboard and mouse will be in a comfortable position, with th trackball helping it all.
I'd hate such small screens but to each their own, and the MacBook wouldn't help.
On the decapitation, he's mentioning buying a cheaper device with a damaged screen (I'd assume those are near junk price) and I guess he used it the same way he uses his other computer.
It all seem to make sense to me ?
My guess is that the "why" is largely just showing off, coupled with oddness.
Except the literal power, apparently!
Also, I believe he hoards the power bricks as he notes.
What he does is not ideal, and I don't share the same view with him, but I understand what he does.
If you have a "house power" 12V battery bank, and a regular laptop which expects 110-240VAC input, 19VDC output (example, random Dell) power brick which is being fed from a small true sine wave inverter, like 12VDC-to-120VAC, you're losing energy to heat and the DC to AC conversion process.
You're converting DC to AC and then the laptop is converting that back into DC. Ideally you do something like wire up a small inline fuse and a tiny meanwell DC-DC converter that can take 12VDC input and output 19VDC natively.
He has basically replicated on a limited budget and in a very small space on land a setup that is not that different than economically built DC power systems are done on boats.
Here’s an M1 and somewhere in this guys Insta are photos of an M2 which is even easier as the cable is easier
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvP8FuLtzzr/
Edit: Here’s the M2 https://www.instagram.com/p/CxgRNuYrUyN/
The relative tradeoffs (hacking together monitors, sketchy battery power, etc) don't seem to coherently add up to the stated goals.
Interesting read tho.
EcoFlow power stations draw somewhere around 30w with the inverter switched on with no load.
The idle power of a Mac Mini at the wall is a few watts total.
Switching to LFP would give them 5-6x the capacity for the same weight. Current rate for LFP is around $100/kWh.
Also, he states that "he doesn't love laptops", because having peripherals he didn't choose are redundant. I believe that's a somewhat distorted and carried-on trauma with laptops with subpar input devices and screens.
While I respect his choices and understand where he's coming from, in my opinion he has to change some perspectives and throw away some prejudices like he did for his belonging to fit into that caravan.
Emotional minimalism and throwing away expired things from our mindset is very beneficial for us.