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During a vacation last week I brought a very cheap, small laptop (~250 euro, 11" ACER) with me as an emergency laptop. Just in case something would happen at wo

by LeonM 5y ago

During a vacation last week I brought a very cheap, small laptop (~250 euro, 11" ACER) with me as an emergency laptop. Just in case something would happen at work that would require my assistance. Naturally, one of our services crashed during my second day away (this service had been running flawlessly for 3 years prior). So I spend a bit of time using the tiny cheap laptop. To my surprise, the tiny laptop was refreshingly nice to work with. There is something elegant about a tiny little fanless machine that you can just throw in your backpack without any worries (unlike with my multi-thousand dollar portable workstation). The keyboard on this particular laptop was actually very nice, though the screen and trackpad are just utter crap. Though the screen was small and low resolution, it was just fine for email, some SSH sessions and light browsing. Anyway, long story short: I am now looking at buying a small, fanless laptop with a decent trackpad and screen. The StarLite would be a good contestant.

necrotic_comp 5y ago
what was the model of the acer ? I have an asus 1015e that is my favorite computer I've ever had, but it's very old at this point and essentially unusable because its disk is so slow and it has very little memory. I'd love to replace it with something more usable.
- LeonM 5y ago
  It's an Acer Aspire ES1-132 series N16Q6. I don't think it's still for sale. I also would not recommend it, the screen is really bad (though was to be expected for the low price), the trackpad is quite bad also. I run Linux on it with i3wm, so I don't bother with the low hardware specs, I rarely use the trackpad. A better screen would be nice though, hence that I am interested in the StarLite.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    I have a similar one that I bought for exactly the same reasons - something I wouldn’t be too sad if ran over by a car. It’s now with my daughter, as her homeschooling computer (schools have since returned to normal where I live, but the kids still use Teams and other apps to keep in touch). It’s definitely recommended.
dejawu 5y ago
I recently got myself a 2017 Macbook (the fanless 12" one with only one USB-C port). I'd highly recommend it - it only ran me about $400. If anything, thanks to more mature USB-C and wireless ecosystems, it's nicer to use now than it was when it was new and cost $1700!
- stevecat 5y ago
  I love my 12" Macbook, I'm using it to write this reply, but goodness is the keyboard awful. I have a can of compressed air at hand at all times to blast the keys when they get stuck. I'm about to (if the shipping notification is anything to go by) upgrade to a 14" MBP but I really hope Apple release something in this size again. It's such a pleasant laptop to use; I even work on my (2D) C++ video game on it.
- 91edec 5y ago
  It would be interesting if Apple bring back this laptop with their M1 chips. I guess an Ipad Pro sort of fills this role hardware wise.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    One could argue the M1 Air is essentially the replacement for the 2015+ MacBook (better perf, battery life, ports screen, but slightly bigger).
  - doublepg23 5y ago
    I just sold a Early 2015 model and I agree. The M1 would be perfect for this machine. The form factor of the MacBook Air is still quite a bit bigger, it's truly wild how thin and light the 12" was.
- schleck8 5y ago
  I've used a Macbook Pro several times while daily driving a Windows PC and Linux occasionally, and I have to say that I didn't like it in the slightest. Not only did the model I use have two design flaws (flexgate and butterfly switch issues) and the whole device weirdly buzzed and vibrated, but the OS in general felt like a supervised playsession at times, e. g. not allowing for portable apps and making sideloading hard. It only having usb c ports made everything even worse. Being forced to use a dongle or hub each time I want to connect an external harddrive is just awful (the alternative being not using the included cables and buying a seperate one for everything).
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Yep I got my Chuwi 14" for the same reason. To use in situations where I'm not very comfortable using an expensive laptop. And like yourself I was impressed with the speed, display and battery life. I would have been disappointed if it had cost me 1000 euro. But for 180, wow. It's much better than I thought it would be. Even 4 years later I still use it a lot. I'm not really a laptop guy anyway, I prefer desktops so this is in fact my only personal laptop in active use.

by LeonM 5y ago

necrotic_comp 5y ago

what was the model of the acer ? I have an asus 1015e that is my favorite computer I've ever had, but it's very old at this point and essentially unusable because its disk is so slow and it has very little memory. I'd love to replace it with something more usable.

LeonM 5y ago
It's an Acer Aspire ES1-132 series N16Q6. I don't think it's still for sale. I also would not recommend it, the screen is really bad (though was to be expected for the low price), the trackpad is quite bad also. I run Linux on it with i3wm, so I don't bother with the low hardware specs, I rarely use the trackpad. A better screen would be nice though, hence that I am interested in the StarLite.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I have a similar one that I bought for exactly the same reasons - something I wouldn’t be too sad if ran over by a car. It’s now with my daughter, as her homeschooling computer (schools have since returned to normal where I live, but the kids still use Teams and other apps to keep in touch). It’s definitely recommended.

dejawu 5y ago

I recently got myself a 2017 Macbook (the fanless 12" one with only one USB-C port). I'd highly recommend it - it only ran me about $400. If anything, thanks to more mature USB-C and wireless ecosystems, it's nicer to use now than it was when it was new and cost $1700!

stevecat 5y ago
I love my 12" Macbook, I'm using it to write this reply, but goodness is the keyboard awful. I have a can of compressed air at hand at all times to blast the keys when they get stuck. I'm about to (if the shipping notification is anything to go by) upgrade to a 14" MBP but I really hope Apple release something in this size again. It's such a pleasant laptop to use; I even work on my (2D) C++ video game on it.
91edec 5y ago
It would be interesting if Apple bring back this laptop with their M1 chips. I guess an Ipad Pro sort of fills this role hardware wise.
- r00fus 5y ago
  One could argue the M1 Air is essentially the replacement for the 2015+ MacBook (better perf, battery life, ports screen, but slightly bigger).
- doublepg23 5y ago
  I just sold a Early 2015 model and I agree. The M1 would be perfect for this machine. The form factor of the MacBook Air is still quite a bit bigger, it's truly wild how thin and light the 12" was.
schleck8 5y ago
I've used a Macbook Pro several times while daily driving a Windows PC and Linux occasionally, and I have to say that I didn't like it in the slightest. Not only did the model I use have two design flaws (flexgate and butterfly switch issues) and the whole device weirdly buzzed and vibrated, but the OS in general felt like a supervised playsession at times, e. g. not allowing for portable apps and making sideloading hard. It only having usb c ports made everything even worse. Being forced to use a dongle or hub each time I want to connect an external harddrive is just awful (the alternative being not using the included cables and buying a seperate one for everything).

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Yep I got my Chuwi 14" for the same reason. To use in situations where I'm not very comfortable using an expensive laptop. And like yourself I was impressed with the speed, display and battery life. I would have been disappointed if it had cost me 1000 euro. But for 180, wow. It's much better than I thought it would be. Even 4 years later I still use it a lot. I'm not really a laptop guy anyway, I prefer desktops so this is in fact my only personal laptop in active use.