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I considered the same, but it's not cost effective.

You can buy a used laptop or PC with much better specs for the same money.

Different use case, surely? This isn’t a laptop, it has no keyboard. And a used PC is going to take up a lot more space.

I see this as a competitor to, say, using an iPad or Android tablet as a kiosk-style device.

I agree -- it looks like there are mounting points on the back. While the review treated it as a pretty thick tablet or external screen, I think the main use case would be a wall mounted display, in something like kiosk mode. Maybe like a room availability monitor? But definitely something where the form is equally important as the function and a laptop wouldn't work.

But, I also think the ability to use this as a portable external/secondary monitor is quite interesting. That does make it more useful.

Agree, looks like the screen costs around $160? With the rpi 4, storage, power, could easily exceed $250...whereas a Samsung Chromebook 4 which can run x86 Linux, has keyboard/trackpad/webcam/battery, can be had for $80 from Walmart.
Raspberry Pi 4s are fetching $100 and up presently. Just for the board, not a fancy integrated for instant boot up solution.
That looks cool, but as a practical matter compare it with a Lenovo Chromebook Duet I bought for $250 last year: nice display, Linux containers work really well if nothing else is running in the device, includes a nice keyboard/case with trackpad, and a stylus pen.

This is the cost of just an Apple magic keyboard cover for the new iPad Pros. I love iPads, but the Lenovo device is capable enough so that someone on a budget could just use it for everything.

Well, compare it with $200 android tablet. With Termux most of Linux command line stuff works; python, dbs...
I've tried that but without an integrated keyboard it's kind of lame to be honest. The Chromebooks really are the deal.
iirc, Termux on the Google Play store has been softly deprecated for a while.

https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...

Latest versions are available on Fdroid
Yes, while the deprecated version is still on the Google Play store. If you were using a chromebook, you would be getting the same deprecated version. There is a way to sideload the F-droid version without going developer mode or compromising ChromeOS' security but it depends on crostini support.

If your chromebook supports crostini though, installing F-Droid/Termux would be quite moot.

Chromebooks suck because they run ChromeOS [1].

> From what I could gather, the version of Chrome was tied to ChromeOS which couldn’t be updated because of the hardware. No new ChromeOS meant no new Chrome which meant stuck at version 76.

[1]: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/a-web-for-all/ / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29894300

You can install Ubuntu on a Chromebook, see GalliumOS.
Sweet! Been pondering on repurposing my Thinkpad 13 chromebook.
I use the display for a employee terminal (display + RFID reader) and at home another as a stream-deck alternative (with stream-pi).

Its pretty easy to setup, but i had multiple problems with WiFi and the touchscreen. Maybe i'm just too dump to calibrate the thing, but my impression of the whole is so-so, not really good, not bad either.