Lately I’ve been deeply conflicted in my device selection, and after considering many devices, I have some thoughts I need to get off my chest.
Device Analysis
MacBook Neo
Honestly, considering the excellent build quality, the MacBook Neo is really quite cheap. Moreover, it naturally has a complete Unix-like environment, which is a huge draw for us in bioinformatics… but then again, only 8GB of RAM… and the naming is a device where the motherboard takes up less than one-fifth of the area… yet they deliberately made it heavier than the Air… Emmmmm…
There’s also the issue that switching to such a device would render some of my previous efforts to accomplish everything via a web server somewhat wasted. Of course, this is entirely self-inflicted suffering.
Lenovo Duet 11
This is an ARM-based ChromeOS device. Honestly, there’s almost no room for tinkering. After all, they all use proprietary drivers, plus ChromeOS takes an extremely closed and non-modifiable approach for security… There’s very little the community can do, let alone me. Also, 8GB of RAM, and having to use a virtual machine… That’s pretty hellish too…
Huawei MateBook
I was originally very hopeful after seeing HarmonyOS open the Euler container that they would release a product truly similar to the MacBook in terms of size and positioning… Then this week I saw… the new MateBook 14. What a cold shower… The circular keyboard is a real turn-off.
Additionally, HarmonyOS still strictly separates PC and mobile systems, which is also very puzzling. It feels like we can’t expect to use their tablets as proper light computers anytime soon.
Final Choice
After weighing everything… I estimate I’ll be staying with the Fydetab Duo for quite some time to come. It’s currently the only device in my desired size range that can get stable software updates.
But I still hope for a smaller, lighter option with stable updates and a complete Unix-like environment… Of course, this demand is really quite niche…
