Originally published at: Review: Pantera PicoPC | Boing Boing
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Might blu-tack one to the back of the telly when the superannuated laptop that lives behind there at the moment finally dies. I had great hopes for the pi, but as it can’t seem to play YouTube or stream Netflix et Al, it’s a bit of a white elephant.
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It’s 2021. Where is the USB-C?
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I think I’ve got an idea for their next product.
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It’s powered by a (nice small) brick that connects by USB-C! But the USB-C hole is just for power.
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Yeah, but now we have to play the dongle/adapter game all over again. This thing should come with at least 2 USB-C ports instead of the standard USB 2 ports.
Do we? I’ve yet to find a single peripheral with a USB-C connector at the PC end. If this only had USB-C ports then everything would need an adaptor.
In an ideal world it would have a selection of A and C ports but with limited space it has to be A really.
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A mouse that is the PC, and the cord is an HDMI / Display Port cable?
Hmmm, power and keyboard?
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I am not a USB-C evangelist by any means but this would be a great use case for it. Plug it into a monitor with an integrated USB-C hub and get power, send video and USB to monitor, connect keyboard to monitor. Boom! Alternatively a single cord with dual HDMI/USB-B connectors (to connect to a monitor with a USB-A hub).
(edit: USB-B might not work for power-distribution purposes, but I am not a connector technology person, so…)
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Well, yes. You’ve proved my point. Those are all adaptors for plugging USB-A connectors into a USB-C port, eg:
The trouble with usb-b connectors is that the USB 3.0 and 2.0 variants are incompatible shapes.
USB-B supplies at most 900 mA for 3.0, 500 mA for 2.0.
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Any good, modestly-priced AMD mini-PCs? I want to set up an emulation box that’s good enough to play Dreamcast and PS2 games, and I want to hook it up to an old CRT TV (IME AMD onboard graphics will do 240p and other nonstandard resolutions under Linux without much trouble, but Intel won’t).
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It has 3 USB 3.0 ports, they are just USB-A, not C.
Just FYI, if you run Kodi on a Raspberry Pi you can watch Youtube and Netflix.
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They are definitely much less common toward the bottom of the price range, AMD doesn’t seem to have a widely embraced equivalent to the J-series Celeron parts; but I’ve heard the AM02, with Athlon 300U, mentioned favorably a few times. AMD will also point you toward Ryzen Embedded based options; some of which are inexpensive; some of which are fancy industrial/signage PCs sensibly but unhelpfully charging a premium for supporting more video outputs than otherwise similar Intel embedded chips.
I’ve also seen Lenovo’s M75n/M75n IoT get discounted on occasion. Their list price is pretty, um, ‘optimistic’ for what they are; but on occasions inscrutable to me they show up at considerably more reasonable prices.
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Plus at 3x5" they’re so ginormous, they get tiring to lug around after a while…
Seriously, I bring a couple of nano PCs with me when I travel for extended periods, and increasingly like the idea of one application/one machine. If you don’t care about running Windows you can get tiny, perfectly capable SBCs for a pittance (Friendly Elec has a nice selection).
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This! And I understand the AMD laptops don’t dissappear on their own from thinness or not have ports, but they don’t have 6 SATA ports so you don’t run out, either (not natively.) Also, to run PS2 games with emu, do I just wanna buy extra PS5 gamecons, or what? Using an eBayed A10 mobo…
Yeah I’ll hold out for the Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver Special Edition Pantera PicoPC.
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