$99 “laptop Shell” for Raspberry Pi or Windows 10 Continuum

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nexdock-turn-your-smartphone-into-a-laptop--2#/

by erggo • 10 years ago

93 33 10 years ago

minsight2• 10 years ago

Buyer beware: Indiegogo campaigns for hardware leave their supporters with very little recourse if the project fails to deliver. I've been burned by this one in the past.

erggo• 10 years ago

This is exactly what I am afraid of. Is there any way how to assess the risk?

astrodust• 10 years ago

Perhaps a Tarot card reader.

minsight2• 10 years ago

In my case, all the person running the campaign had to do was send out weekly messages to those who had purchased. The content could be something like "I'm trying to call my partner, but he's not answering". You may get your hardware. But if you don't, the game is slanted against you having some sort of acceptable outcome.

I'd consider it a gamble and wouldn't spend any sum of money that I'd feel bad about losing.

vittore• 10 years ago

I don't get it, just go on ebay (http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m5...) or amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/191-8083913-3793561...) and get yourself old motorolla atrix/bionic lapdock , it has hdmi + usb and basically would work as hdmi external screen + usb keyboard and usb mouse for any device that supports it.

UPDATE: well, apparently price jumped a lot, i got myself two of those 10 and 12 inches models for like 30 and 70 dollars 2 years ago.

but anyway, there is existing piece of technology from almost 5 years ago, just was a bit ahead of it's time. People used that with rasberry-pi for quite some time too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-9l1rPNCgo)

lukifer• 10 years ago

I own one of these, and it's super-useful, but I still want a NexDock. The ports are awkwardly placed, requiring weird adapters (I had to shave off plastic to get both HDMI and USB to fit at the same time.) The USB port is also powered, and so tries to power the Pi, except at 500 mA, for some reason over-riding the 1A power input. And it has weird issues with not waking up if only the USB and not HDMI is attached.

The experience has been "good enough", but in my mind only justified the existence of a dedicated device for this purpose. It's incredibly useful to have a portable, self-powered screen+input that works with any arbitrary computer.

bydo• 10 years ago

You can get an entire functioning laptop for under $100 these days.

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Acer-Asp...

It doesn't run Windows 10 very well, with only 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage (neither of which are user-upgradeable), but is actually a surprisingly nice with a light Linux distro.

viewer5• 10 years ago

Holy cow, I never knew that was a thing! Do you have one? I need a cheap laptop/tablet/something that runs well enough for PDFs with ~200 pages (for pen-and-paper RPGs) and that's about my only use case. My poor little lenovo T60 from 2007 is just not up to the task, even after I took Windows off and put on Mint.

Animats• 10 years ago

That seems to be "out of stock" or "discontinued" from Microsoft, or $189 at Acer.

What PC World calls a "budget laptop" is from at $178 to $450.[1] There are lots of low-end tablets below $50, but add a keyboard and the price takes a big jump.

[1] http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371334,00.asp

rbanffy• 10 years ago

I would love one with a space to install a RPi or similar device inside the shell.

stuartmalcolm• 10 years ago

http://www.pi-top.com/#/

FilterSweep• 10 years ago

If they made this for ODROID I'd get this 100%. I wonder if some cutting will allow fitment with a C1.

3327• 10 years ago

very high price point for a shell.

tehbeard• 10 years ago

A shell with a screen. The 7" RasPi touchscreen is ~$70 and that doesn't have a keyboard, trackpad or hdmi (it uses a DSI ribbon cable and the gpio instead).

dwild• 10 years ago

The RasPi touchscreen is way overpriced too. You can get a whole tablet running Windows 10 for a little bit more. Sure it will come from China and will be probably filled with backdoor but the cost is there.

A better example would be that Acer laptop that someone else talked about here: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Acer-Asp...

carlesfe• 10 years ago

I'm now wary of indiegogo and crowdfunding laptops in general. I purchased the pi-top and, while it was a feat at the time, the build quality is so low that I just can't use it. The keyboard sucks, the trackpad is super cheap, and the plastic has a bulge which makes it uncomfortable to use.

So, trying to convert this comment into positive feedback for the creators: please spend the biggest part of your budget into the input devices. If you can't provide a good build quality, don't be cheap on the keyboard and laptop.

desireco42• 10 years ago

Yep same here. Make something good and I will be customer of more then one device. But I really need review by gadget blog before I will consider buying.

On the other hand, super excited that we can have something like this. I was thinking about what it would take for me to use Raspberry Pi at work.

analognoise• 10 years ago

I'll support it! ...by buying one after they reach production, assuming the product has good reviews.

gravypod2• 10 years ago

This is how everyone should support projects that they find interesting. If someone doesn't have any skills except marketing they will steal your money, if they can make the product and push it into production, you will be able to buy it a few years after they have the idea.

SwellJoe• 10 years ago

This is a great idea, and a concept that I'm ready for (my phone and tablets are already more powerful than the first 20, or so, desktop computers that I've owned, including machines up to just a few years ago). But, this particular device probably won't do, for me. It's as big as a full-size laptop but has a lower resolution display than I'm willing to use for laptop work today. To be clear: the size of it is fine, but only if it provided a reasonably high resolution display (which, I guess, would it much harder to hit this low price point).

I also wonder why it isn't fully functional with an Android device, and seems to only support display. I have a little keyboard and standing case for one of my tablets, and it works OK as a "very tiny laptop" (though not being a full-size keyboard makes it a non-starter for any real work). Why wouldn't this work for that, too? Does Windows phone have some specific functionality that makes it more appropriate for this kind of thing?

Anyway, this seems pretty close to a great implementation of a great idea. Maybe after launch they'll make a 1080P or QHD version for a little extra money. There's a lot of possibility for making this a great laptop replacement; they could stick a battery in it for longer working time, it could provide USB hub functionality for a mouse and other devices, etc.

hultner• 10 years ago

While on the topic is there some cheap alternatives to this that can function as a VGA/DVI/HDMI-display+USB-keyboard out today? Also would this support to use the keyboard over usb instead of Bluetooth?

I have quite a few servers and various headless computers at home, every once in awhile I need to hook them up to a monitor and keyboard for some sort of debugging, today I usually carry around a spare LCD-monitor and standard keyboard however something like an empty laptop to be used as a portable terminal would be great for this.

warfangle2• 10 years ago

Why do these things always include a discrete touchpad?

Why not a series of phone-specific-form-factor caddy that snaps into the laptop where the touch pad is, that you can slide your phone into?

tracker12• 10 years ago

Because that would require OS level integration with the phone.... Even with full screen apps, swiping in from at least one direction is usually the "escape" ... Also, phones come in many form factors, and creating face adapters for multiple devices would be difficult, to say the least... though options for 3d printed services may alleviate some of that.

What I'd really like to see is a Bluetooth standard for full remote input and ui rendering. That would be useful for car stereos as well as with devices such as this.

warfangle2• 10 years ago

I don't think it would. Many full screen apps like Kindle require two swipes from the top before it brings down the system menu (first shows the status bar, second slides down the menu). Maybe iOS is different?

You already have a fantastic multitouch device in your pocket, and many of these cheap shells have a horrific touchpad touchpad experience. Maybe shells for the major form factors would actually be cheaper than putting together a touchpad experience that doesn't make you want to chuck the device out the nearest window.

gravypod2• 10 years ago

Last I remember, there was a system built just like this from Motorola. People have been using raspberry pis with them for some time now. You can find them from 50-80 USD online.

Eric_WVGG• 10 years ago

There’s a parallel universe where the whole “Post PC” thing didn’t really work out and the Windows model reigns supreme and these things are unstoppably popular.

This is not that universe, but it’s still a pretty nifty idea.

jokoon• 10 years ago

I should plan to use the RPi as a second computer. Only thing to do is find an used LCD screen, but I'm not sure if an SD card can really sustain daily use (I think flash memory is not really meant to sustain many read/write), or if it's still possible to find USB hard drives under $30 (a 100GB should be cheaper than a 128GB USB flash drive, but again I don't think that 100GB hard drive are still being built).

The RPi is great, but there aren't good enough starter packages that can really convert it into a full computer. There are many second hand LCD screens out there that could be sold with a RPi.

bootload• 10 years ago

"I should plan to use the RPi as a second computer. Only thing to do is find an used LCD screen"

'7″ Touchscreen Monitor' designed fro Rpi ~ https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-touch-disp...

hallz• 10 years ago

I like the idea. Having a separate device is a pain - another thing to manage. Also this thing is designed to work with Windows Continuum: http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8560195/microsoft-continuum...

haser_au• 10 years ago

I've backed this, mainly because I'd like to encourage getting the most out of our smart phones, especially in the corporate workplace. Combine this with virtualisedapps (Citrix, etc.) and you have a very usable workstation that is also portable and a LOT cheaper than a laptop. I don't expect everyone in our org to be able to replace their laptop with this, but it's definitely possible for 40% of our organisation.

$99 “laptop Shell” for Raspberry Pi or Windows 10 Continuum

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