But not too short, or he’d end up being Ron DeSantis.

Nightmares are dreams.

People keep saying this, but it’s pretty reasonable as far as tablets go. Its base is 16GB and 512GB, and it MSRPs for $713 USD with a sale to $655 for quite awhile now (though out of stock). The Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ with 12GB and 256GB is $700 on sale for $650. Considering the nature of the OS, maybe the standard FE is more equivalent with 8GB and 256GB at $520 on sale for $470. But you still have half the storage, and the Starlite is upgradable with standard M.2 NVME drive.

Even then, you’re getting a full Linux OS if that’s what you’re after. That’s a very niche market right now, to get a fully Linux capable tablet, much less one where the manufacturer supports and encourages it. Hell, it uses coreboot firmware. Considering the niche market, I’d say that’s a pretty damned good price. But if you don’t want full Linux support, and are happier with AOSP or Google’s Android, you can get a Pixel tablet for $400, or $500 with 256GB.

Sure you can get tablets for significantly less, like the Fire stuff from Amazon and a last-gen, base model iPad. But all of those have severe disadvantages as far as software and/or privacy. The N200 CPU in the Starlite isn’t going to set any records, but the ability to run full fat Linux puts it in a segment with the Surface and other Windows tablets. That’s something that the iPad Pro can’t even compete with, despite Apple fans begging for MacOS on those models for years.

Thanks, I’ll have to remember to check it out when they add Pixel 8 support.

I feel like Garmin is building their spiritual successor. They don’t try to do too much, but they do quite a lot. And there are so many models, they address most folks use cases in one way or another.

Btw, the dude from Pebble (also Beeper, Eric Migicovsky) is trying to build a small Android phone.

Watches sound great on e-ink, but last I looked into it, the displays couldn’t support the frequency of refreshes over a reasonable life time.

I’m with you, by the way. I do like having a compact e-ink reader, but I really don’t want to do anything but that with it.

I both agree and disagree. I definitely want a small phone, and the small size would limit the use case of the phone itself. But some of us artificially limit the capability of their phones in order to minimize distractions, and some use dumb or feature phones to accomplish similar goals.

Then there is further segregation of use case between devices. Just because you can do something on a phone, doesn’t mean you choose to. I want work nowhere near my phone, but I’ll put it in a work profile on my tablet.

One might choose to consume various media on their tablet instead of phone. Sure, you can watch movies on your phone, but it’s a lot better on a 10-12" tablet. Sure you can read ebooks on your phone, but it would be a lot better on a smaller tablet that unfortunately hardly exists in the Android world these days.

Btw, you might want to check out Onyx for some smaller readers. Particularly the Palma and Nova Air 2. There are definitely some privacy questions with them, though.

That depends, of course. For media consumption you might want a bigger screen. For reading you might want a smaller screen. Many will want a more mainstream OS that plays better with all their apps and various DRM. Some will want a more capable OS, like Linux or Windows. Some will want iOS, for some unfathomable reason…

For me, a big portion of what I want a tablet for will be covered by the Pixel Tablet on Graphene. That is multiple profiles, for work, play, and banking.

• Most of my banking apps are available, and most importantly so is YNAB. My phone is kept with a very minimal app footprint, and no Play Store in any capacity, and I don’t particularly like budgeting in my browser either on my phone or laptop.
• I don’t let work anywhere near my phone, but occasionally I do want to check Outlook or Teams without jumping into my work laptop. I also need to monitor some things actively for hours on end, so it would be nice to be able to do that from the kitchen, living room, or patio without having to go through the nightmare that is un-docking and re-docking my work laptop that runs Windows. Luckily work lets me Intune join a tablet so long as it’s not rooted, others may have stricter OS limitations though.
• Sometimes I just want to chill out on the couch and watch a movie or TV show. I don’t have a TV, and if I’m on my laptop I tend to put the video in PIP and divide my attention. A tablet makes me far less likely to do this.

I prefer Calyx on my phone, for the sake of the extra privacy of Micro-G vs sandboxed Google Play Services. But most of my tablet use case tends more towards mainstream, so I think the compromise is worth it for the more robust multi-profile support in Graphene. But hey, Calyx supports the Pixel Tablet, too.

But… part of me still wants a tablet with a full Linux distro on it, so I’m tempted by stuff like the Starlabs Starlite, and the upcoming Minisforum Ryzen 8000 tablet. But I won’t have a streamlined OS that minimizes distractions, and unless I run Ubuntu LTS I wouldn’t be able to use it for anything work related. There are also a lot more DRM limitations in regards to streaming video.

Point is, everyone is going to have their own special use case. I’m just glad we’re finally getting some FOSS capable tablets into the market, be they running AOSP or Linux.

It’s limited for sure, but there are most definitely color e-ink displays now.

But the bigger limitation is still refresh rate, and lifespan of the display in devices that try to force more frequent refreshes.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=color+e-ink&t=ffab&ia=web

https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite

Rocky isn’t one of the distros you can get preloaded, but it’s probably fairly trivial.

Oh well, I guess I’ll return the Pixel 8 I just ordered.

Nah, I’ll just install Calyx, and invite Sundar to suck my dick.

Yeah, I have a lot of mixed feelings about it, but I’m tending towards some forced adherence to standards. Or at least interoperability through open federation.

That’s why we need them to open up the APIs in the short term, but the long term goal should be to get the Universal Profile advanced, and move away from a Google-centric implementation.

Which, to be fair, Google really did seem to want carriers implementing their own interoperable RCS solutions. But they needed shit to be done, so they ended up doing it themselves.

I know, it was just so disappointing.

Holy shit, someone else who played Interstate 76! Too bad Interstate 82 never saw the light of day.

This would be great if I could actually use it in AOSP without Google’s own app, and view/reply to RCS conversations on my laptop using a 3rd party application. Open the APIs, Google, or you’re just blowing hot air.

Typically go for the model coming off business leases, with the slim T model or 13" X model being very popular and well built. The X1 series tends to have cooling issues, so I’d avoid them without a lot of research into the specific model. The P series tends to get run harder, so I’d be a bit hesitant there as well. It seems a lot of companies extended to a 4 or even 5 year lifecycle, so normally I’d be saying to start looking for the T14s g1, of which the AMD models started being very good. But you’d probably be looking more towards the T480s and T490s, still, and I think you’ll probably want to stick with Intel for those. But if you find a good deal on a T14s, particular the AMD model, I’d say jump on it.

In recent models, target the 400nit low power IPS screens. Avoid the 500nit privacy guard screen, which basically behaves like a TN panel as far as viewing angles. The 300nit screen has color reproduction and uniformity issues, but I do have one on my work T14s g3, and it’s not horrible. I have the 400nit on my P14s g4, and it is substantially better.

Thinkpads aren’t as upgradable as they used to be, so be mindful of the RAM in particular.

Also none of the 500 nit privacy guard, and the 400 nit low power is generally much preferable to the 300 nit. Not just for brightness, but color reproduction and uniformity are far better.

I believe the T480s and T490s are in the sweet spot right now. Most companies seem to be moving to 4 or 5 year lifecycles, so we don’t seem to be seeing many T14s g1 coming off lease yet.

Well fuck, I guess I can’t use that word anymore.