On 12/4/16, Russell Hyer russell.hyer@gmail.com wrote:
Hey Luke,
Well, obviously you know that there are a couple more hardware people like https://www.thinkpenguin.com/ in the US
my sponsor, so yes :) however, they focus on laptops around the $500 give-or-take mark, max screen resolution 1920x1080, weight around 2.5kg... the budget here is around *three times* that amount.
and novatech.co.uk in the UK,
yeah i like them... i'm not in the UK though.
but none of these are particularly interesting from a tech or friendliness perspective.
yeah although i don't like it, the lack of choice here in the libre department means i have to go "next level down" on priorities.
If it's just about having a machine that might be compromised whilst you bootstrap the new system up,
no, not at all: that's not a priority, here. i need something that i can do the 3D CAD and PCB cadwork on, as well as run two web browsers and do kernel and u-boot compiles
* openscad takes up about 1.5 GB of resident RAM * chrome takes up about 2GB * firefox is nuts and can end up taking up around 3-4 GB of *resident* memory all on its own * running the PCB CAD program in a VM takes up 2.5GB resident RAM
... we're well over 8GB already...
then, the Mac Mini would get my upvote (true, it's bad in some respects concerning freedom), but it does support multiple screens, but, then it is locked down (soldered RAM).
i need a decent portable machine as opposed to a desktop: i'm moving around too much to be able to do otherwise. i can't fit a macmini and a 4k HDMI screen, keyboard, mouse and power supplies in my Tumi backpack, otherwise i'd consider it.
Whatever you decide, I feel I should add that whilst my business is improving, I've still not been able to generate any more money for the project. (I could sell some items, though, though that's more worst case scenario)
it's really appreciated that you'd consider that, russell. with the crowdfunding money in the bank it's fine - no need to push yourself outside of self-sustainable finance. i can easily justify getting a second laptop (keeping the macbook pro as a spare) because without one, if the macbook pro fails the entire project completely stops dead for at least a week, maybe two, sorting things out. i can't have that happen.
l.