I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses — here’s what happened

He addresses this by saying a laptop doesn't allow you to replace components, doesn't have mechanical keyboard and there's no ultra wide support.

The funny thing is, this device he's using doesn't allow you to replace components either. And there are 21:9 laptops and mechanical keyboards available.

Seemed like he's trying to reverse-engineer his way into justifying a use case for it, but just failed.

Here, follow this affiliate link to this overpriced portable machine.

You're not wrong but this is a distinctly different experience. Some these AR glasses allow you to have multiple giant virtual displays instead of the tiny ~14 inch one. Hence the reference to a "desk setup".

Although I would argue that it would make more sense just to plug the glasses into a laptop.

But also you can use your preferred keyboard and mouse (with more space for the mouse).

I also suspect ArsTechnica of running sponsored AI stories these days.

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Have they ever not been?

And a whole bunch of other shit.

I carry two laptops in my work bag regularly, a 15" and 14"

Welcome to Future plc publications. Almost entirely clickbait advertorial garbage anymore. It's sad, really.

He needs an actual typewriter instead of a keyboard to go where no douche has gone before.

Depends the type. Some are essentially just a monitor.

At this point, something like a steam deck would go better with the glasses, at least it has its own battery

I've looked at this before and I agree that mini-ITX is probably the most realistic. You want to look hard for a small mini-ITX case. Though even that isn't that small. I think that you could maybe save some space --- the mini-ITX power supply pushes the case size out in one dimension, so there's probably some unused internal volume -- if you could stick components, like the HMD, into part of what would normally be airspace interior to the case.

I've thought about doing this too, with a very similar setup.

Larger FOV for your screen than anything else portable. Potentially more power efficient too, as you don't blast light everywhere to get a tiny bit into an eye. Can be used in very bright conditions, like outdoors on a bright summer day, without issues. More comfortable to use in some other orientations --- I use a split ergo keyboard with my laptop when lying back in a recliner or on a couch, lets my hands not be jammed in front of me and obstructing my views of the screen, but an HMD is even more flexible.

Laptops have limited hardware customizability, so it's really the only route other than carrying a portable display if you want more control over the PC hardware. Want a 100Wh battery or larger? Non-soldered memory and more of it? More expansion ports or storage slots? Moving the hot-and-noisy stuff beneath the table instead of beneath your hands? For the form factor: have airflow vents that aren't on the bottom and covered up when on a lap (ironically, "laptop"), chest, couch, or bed? If you're a woman and want to use the thing on your belly while lying down, not having your breasts in between your eyes and the screen? For anyone, not having their hands in the way?

Laptops have a lot of limitations as to input devices. Do you want a Trackpoint? You're limited to a very few models of laptop. Trackball? Few laptops and it has to be very small. A trackpad with three physical buttons? Very few laptops on offer make that an option. Particular about your keyboard layout? If you're getting external hardware, there's a cornucopia of options, and you can mix and match as you'd like. Yeah, you can also do this with laptops and a stand and a docking station and external hardware, if you're aiming for use at a particular desk, but that's not really suitable for a couch, say.

The privacy is nice -- and I don't think that that reasonably can be reduced to looking at porn, which I assume most people aren't going to want to do in public anyway, for obvious reasons. I can throw a password list up onscreen, don't need to deal with those inane "hide your password as you type it" things that try to mitigate privacy issues with people using computers in public places.

Problem is that at least today, wearing HMDs is not as comfortable and sharp as looking at a display. Easy to get something slightly blurry if it's not perfectly aligned. My HMD tends to fog up, though the Xreal thing in the article has more airflow and it's probably less of an issue. Also, VR goggles and headphones tend to compete for the same spot around the ears --- circumaural headphones need to seal there, so you may need to accept whatever sound, if any, the HMD can provide. You have less awareness of your surroundings, which matters in some situations.

A lot of work has gone into making laptops particularly low power, and if you build your own system, some of that is on you, to pay attention to component power consumption.

Also, I couldn't find a way to get some kind of external battery to be treated by Linux as a power_supply class device, which lets Linux do things like automatically hibernate when power gets critical and use nice in-UI reporting of low battery. On the power source side, USB PD power banks, which it would seem would be a good solution, technically have the ability to report a battery level but AFAICT do not actually do this, or even present themselves as visible devices on the USB tree. You could probably work something up yourself with a modular battery bank --- at the very least, even if Linux can't use it as a power_supply device, NUT can be rigged up to treat some hardware that you can put on a modular battery bank as a UPS, which accomplishes some of the same stuff, like auto-shutdown. And a modular battery bank is pretty user-configurable. But...that's not necessarily all that portable.

I would definitely do this instead of a laptop if they managed to get HMDs to the point where I'd be willing to dump my displays and go all HMDs. We aren't there yet, though.

I'm pretty sure that the Xreal glasses have a carrying case, based on when I was looking at them. I carry a pair of headphones with my laptop, and they come with one. Does require some volume in a backpack or bag, though.

Really. That's a bummer. if there is an advantage to the glasses it should be that you can have as many displays going as you'd want.

The quest 3 stays sharp when alignment changes, its surprisingly nice to work in outside of the brick on my face. I would hope the xreal glasses can match quest 3 clarity

you can do a similar thing with the quest 3 for less money I think

It's longer than a laptop, but honestly, I have my laptop set up to hibernate if I have it closed for more than ten minutes or so, and it takes several seconds to get that dehibernated, even off NVMe, and some of that is happening in parallel. My last laptop was a lot slower, took something north of ten seconds to get dehibernated. He's gotta drop a keyboard on his desk, unzip his HMD case, and plug each in (if he's not using a wireless keyboard or the wireless accessory for that HMD, neither of which I would personally use). Some of that at least can be parallelized. And that HMD has integrated headphones, IIRC --- I carry headphones with me for my laptop, so he doesn't need to do that bit.

EDIT: Oh, and his trackball/trackpad/mouse or whatever. I carry a trackball with my laptop, but don't usually use it.

I originally had that when people started using Bluetooth earpieces with cell phones, and you'd see them talking to the air.