For awhile now I've been thinking about how nice it would be to have a something like a modern version of the Poqet PC.

The Poqet PC had a much nicer keyboard than the laptop in the article, and between the simplicity of its software and a very aggressive power management strategy (it actually paused the CPU between keystrokes) it could last for weeks to months on two AA batteries.

Imagine a modern device with the same design sensibilities. Instead of an LCD screen you could use e-ink. For both power efficiency, and because the e-ink wouldn't be well suited to full motion video, the user interface could be text/keyboard based (though you could still have it display static images). Instead of the 8088 CPU you could use something like an ARM Cortex M0+, which would give you roughly the same amount of power as a 486 for less than 1/100th the wattage of the 8088. Instead of the AAs you could use sodium ion or lithium titanate cells for their wide temperature range and high cycle life (and although these chemistries have a lower energy density than lithium ion, they'd probably still give you more capacity than the AAs, especially if you used prismatic cells). With such a miniscule power consumption you could keep a device like that charged with a solar panel built into the case.

Such a device would have very little computing power compared to even a smartphone, but it could still be useful for a lot of things. Besides things like text editors or spreadsheets, you could replicate the functionality of the Wiki Reader and the Cybiko (imagine something like the Cybiko with LoRaWAN). You could maybe even keep a copy of Open Street Map on there, though I don't know how computationally expensive parsing its data format and displaying a map segment is.

I don't really see the point in low powered small devices like this, when something like an iPad/Galaxy Tab/eInk tablet is far better suited to the typical tasks you'd use them for.

we don't do things because we need to. we do things because we can.

playing doom on a iPod or Zune is completely awful. so why does it exist? because someone willed it into existence. why? because they could.

Not really applicable here though. Can you use a terrible keyboard on an 8" screen? Absolutely. Can you use a much better keyboard on a much better screen the same size or smaller/bigger on preference by using a more common device? Also yes.

you're looking at one aspect in a negative light.

on the flip side to your argument, maybe op travels by train 8 hours a day (4 there 4 back) and they only have one of those tiny little trays as a desk. I'd rather do something unusually instead of doing nothing boringly.

besides, wth have you done that makes your shitty opinion valid in this context?

I wrote a 16 page term paper on a Note 1 on a train while going back and forth to school. I also wrote some crappy android apps on the same phone for school. all on a crappy bluetooth keyboard and a 5.3inch screen. I think that gives me some idea of why such a thing exists.

want to know why I did it?

because:

1. I could and so I did
2. I had to because I was broke af in college and didn't have a device at home that could do half the shit my phone could
3. I had the time on the train so why not use it

so, to put it bluntly, I think it's pretty fucking applicable here.

You have COMPLETELY misread my comments and missed the point.

My point was that there are plenty of other better devices suited to these tasks than a little obscure laptop with a crappy keyboard, such as an iPad or Android tablet or eink tablet, or even a phone. My argument wasn’t “hurr durr doing nothing would be better”.

My opinion is “valid in this context” because I’ve spent countless hours RDPd in to various machines and servers in trains, buses , passenger seats of cars, on the side of the road,etc fixing issues and making changes that saved literal millions of dollars at a time, and the last thing I’ve wanted in those situations was a worse device to do it on simply because it’s “different”.

The devices you listed are either locked down, or are low powered devices themselves. None of them have a keyboard which is essential for linux.

Being “locked down” is irrelevant for a device used to read and write on. All those devices are also significantly more powerful than this thing.

They all also have keyboard attachments readily available across all sizes and prices.

Linux isn’t at all necessary for the use cases the author talks about. Windows would be massively overkill.

Mobile Apps really are really lacking in terms of usability. There really is a use case for a real laptop experience

For reading and writing like the OP talks about?

Yes - I was surprised recently how useless the text selection and editing features on Android are. I had to edit a bigger document (like 70 pages) where I had to move some paragraphs, delete some and so on. No problem on a desktop even on a smaller screen, but Android was surprisingly unusable

I’ve had no problem doing that on Android. Cut and paste work just fine.

Take a longer text (like 70 pages or so) and try to delete the first 30 pages.