On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Andy Ball wrote:

> Hello Brad,

Uh...the name's "Curt", actually. :-) And you want to be a bit careful
with the quoting; you pulled my text out of Brad's message where he
quoted it and attributed it to him rather than me.

>   BS> ...there are plenty of nice little MIPS machines that run NetBSD
>     > to chose from here in Japan.  However, they are not much less
>     > expensive and are much more limited in their capabilities...If
>     > you need something for serious work, you want a "real" laptop,
>     > not a palmtop.
>
> You're missing my point.  I /have/ a real laptop and it works well for
> me.  By its nature thouggh, it is too large, heavy, obtrusive and
> thirsty to take everywhere.

Well, I find many laptops fit that description exactly, which is why I
didn't buy one. Yet my Libretto doesn't fit that description. Size is in
the beholder's eye, I guess, but you didn't give us any indications of
what sort of size and weight you are looking at, if I recall correctly,
or what you have now that you consider to big.

If you're comparing a 1.2 Kg Libretto L2 to a 4.5 Kg desktop
replacement, you're going to see a huge, huge, huge difference. If
you're comparing it to a 2 Kg Vaio, you might not see much difference.
Or you might; even reducing the weight by 40% might fix the portability
and size problem.

> I would also argue that very serious work
> can be done with something as simple as a DEC VT-100, if it is
> connected somehow to the capabilities one needs.

Right. The problem is, portable machines usually aren't.

> A pocket VT-100 would be quite useful, but a palmtop running NetBSD
> lets be take more of the functionality out with me.  Network
> diagnostics and an ssh client spring to mind.  A VNC client and
> perhaps a web browser would just be icing on the cake.

Well, the 640 x 240 screens on the palmtops are going to make VNC or
web browsing a bit painful. Lots of people seem to be able to live with
ssh and so on on tiny keyboard, though, although I can't.

> I think there's real power in the ability to connect wirelessly from
> the field to a more powerful box in a dungeon somewhere, have that
> build code (or do any other batch job) fast and download the end
> result to my pocket.

I do that anyway with my current notebook; a 600 MHz Crusoe really
doesn't cut it these days if you want to work efficiently. (I keep a 1.5
GHz Athlon in the office for the heavy lifting.) But this is just in the
office; if you want to do the "wireless download" thing, make sure you
can get the wireless access you need. You may not be happy trying to
download an 8 MB build of something or other over a 32 Kbps link. But
usually I find the client site has Internet access for me, so it's not
such a big deal.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   +81 90 7737 2974   http://www.netbsd.org
    Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light.  --XTC