A NOTABLE USE FOR A NOTEBOOK

I wasn't actually done with notebooks yesterday, just done with 
writing about them, at this computer which actually happens to be 
slower than any of them.

Actually I was embarrasingly slow as well, but the significance of 
the serial terminal option in Pocket PuTTY, complete with all the 
options of the full PC version, eventually dawned on me. I've long 
had it in the back of my mind that it would be handy to have a 
little device with a mini-keyboard to sit on a workbench and act as 
a serial terminal for debugging devices with microcontrollers in 
them, but somehow this 7" Notebook thing, and its more recent 
followers into my computer junk assortment, never came to mind for 
it.

Although not recognised by default, a quick search turned up that 
the popular manufacturer of USB-serial adapter chips, FTDI, still 
actively supplies and supports drivers for Windows CE 6. The 
installation instructions for making it install automatically 
without regedit didn't seem to work, but regedit was included in 
the notebook's installation so I was able to double-click on the 
.reg file and that installed it OK. In typical Windows fashion it 
appears all the way up at COM7 (COM6 also seems to be something - 
probably the unpopulated serial port on the motherboard), so it 
took some trial and error to figure that out though.

I could use the Eee PC notebook with linux and it would no doubt 
work as well, but setting this up was probably quicker and it seems 
to work fine. The Eee PC can be a spare for when this dies. So 
there you go. I definitely should have thought of it years ago 
because having a full-size keyboard rattling around the workbench 
and looking back and forth to a full-size computer screen is a pain 
in the neck. That is also because I've got things set up more for 
old-fashioned electronics than modern microcontroller/SBC stuff 
though - almost everything on the bench is about 70s/80s era.

I was also curious about whether the cheap Chinese 7" Notebook line 
had continued (ASUS seem to have abandoned really-tiny-screen 
models), and it turns out that it has. They're a bit different, but 
actually look like they might have adressed most of my criticisms. 
They're all PC compatible now, with quad-core 2.0 - 2.7GHz (or 2.0 
- 2.5GHz, or 2.3GHz, depending on what bit of the page you read) 
Intel Celeron J4125 CPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM, and 128GB - 1TB SSD. They 
_claim_ an all aluminium body and weight of only 650g (about the 
same as the Eee PC 701 without its battery), the fast CPU has 
apparantly required them to add a fan though. They've shaved 3cm 
off the width and added another row of keys on the keyboard to 
compensate, which wonderfully forced them to replace the touchpad 
with my preference of a trackpoint (or "little red cap mouse" as 
they call it). It also has a HDMI port (so unlike my old one you 
can connect it to a real monitor), card reader, audio out, and two 
(presumably fully-functional) USB ports, one USB3 and one USB2. No 
Ethernet port though, just 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2.4GHz/5GHz WiFi which 
they've hopefully improved upon in the last 12 or so years.

But at $406.57AUD there's no way I'd ever buy one, so I guess I'll 
just have to wait a decade until someone's getting rid of their one 
as old junk. Of course as a serial terminal it wouldn't work any 
better anyway.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001762582778.html
From a "LAPTOP Factoey Outlet", none the less. :)

Curiously they're not the cheapest laptops available. Larger-screen 
ones that look more like ASUS' later EeeBook series are on there 
for well under $300AUD.

 - The Free Thinker