Hardware """Portabilize""" a laptop

[Deleted member 446461]

if you weren't in an... unfortunate... country, i could easily suggest a ton of very usable cheap older laptops, but since you're also concerned about size, i'm limited on options as my most recommended laptop is 17" and nearly 2" thick

At least it's light, right?
... right?

Doable, yes. Convenient, don't think so.

If you want something small, then buy a netbook, many would say.
But a netbook lacks many features a "normal" laptop has, most of them are capability of using a better CPU, more RAM (most of them are limited up to 2 GB by limits from the motherboard).

Trimming a motherboard laptop means that you are willing, beside making it smaller to some -limited- extent, to leave out/modify some features/connections on it, like the USB ports, HDMI, Ethernet, headphones/microphone, etc. And that's no easy task for a single motherboard model.
Getting to the point of being able of portabilizing a Wii, means that many Wii motherboards have been damaged too far from repair, with a single laptop motherboard you don't have that possibility, unless you buy many of the very same model, and that makes it far from viable.
But you can try, why not?

I've got the idea of putting the laptop in a backpack instead and using a PC-to-3DS streamer.

 

[Deleted User]

At least it's light, right?


... right?

heaviest laptop i own coming in at nearly 4kg, it's a workstation laptop not 100% meant for portability, but in turn is able to run games fairly acceptably all the way up to somewhere around 2013

if you're still interested in the model anyway, it's a dell precision m6300, it's from 2008, supports up to 8gb ram and a fairly decent core 2 duo

it supports cpu, gpu and ram upgrades, and you can find them for as little as $50usd on ebay

 

[Kwyjor]

using a PC-to-3DS streamer.

If I'm not mistaken, none of the projects for PC-to-3DS streaming are especially useful, but I see you're already looking into that.

I don't see why you wouldn't just use your phone for everything.

 

[Deleted member 446461]

If I'm not mistaken, none of the projects for PC-to-3DS streaming are especially useful, but I see you're already looking into that.

I'm already asking for help there; it doesn't want to connect.
And it doesn't need as many drivers as PinBox, because I got Windows 7 Super Lite.
The Internet speed of my country didn't let me download anything better than that.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I would like to know if there could be a way to minimize a laptop computer's physical size by slicing unnecesary parts of the motherboard, like "portabilizing" a Nintendo Wii.

Most of the physical size is not going to be due to the motherboard. The battery, screen, keyboard etc. will limit how much you can slice off the width and length. Modern laptops already have very small screen bezels and while you could put in a smaller screen and battery, at that point it makes more sense just to get a laptop with a smaller screen and battery to begin with. And that's kind of the issue. Laptops already come in every size imaginable and if you want something small and were to get say an ultrabook or similar, there would not be much you could do to make that smaller as it's already made to be as compact as possible thickness wise, while the width and length are determined entirely by how big of a screen you want.

You could probably take a cheap brick of a laptop where size was not a concern in the design process and shrink it down, there's just not much point when small, slim laptops are plentiful.

The thickness of a laptop is largely determined by cooling requirements of the components used. Here there might be some room to shave off a few mm by designing a cooler with a better design but that is a complex thing requiring expensive tools to do.
A Wii is not very power hungry and there is almost no cooling required, as well as that, the Wii is much chunkier than a laptop, and already by removing the optical drive a considerable amount of that thickness can be shaved off. But laptops these days are designed to be as thin as possible because it fits more easily in bags etc. and allows for larger screens, keyboards and touchpads. They're barely thicker than the thickness of the PCB+keyboard+screen already. So you can't do anything about the thickness, and in order to reduce width/length you'd actually be increasing the thickness because the only way to relocate things is by stacking them on top or below, and you'd have to replace the screen with a smaller one which already makes it rather pointless. Chunky little laptops like that used to exist, but they weren't appealing because they were still heavy, they looked ugly, and had small screens, so people stopped making them.

 

[Deleted member 446461]

Chunky little laptops like that used to exist, but they weren't appealing because they were still heavy, they looked ugly, and had small screens, so people stopped making them.

sigh.
If they would only continue making them.

 

[Roamin64]

I am not sure of your goal though? At first you wanted to make a laptop smaller, but now you'd settle with using a laptop, a phone for a hotspot and a 3ds screen ? How efficient can running a pc on a 3ds screen be ? Wouldn't it be better to actually send the display to the iphone instead ? More power, better resolution , possibility to connect external peripherals like keyboards? (Mouse maybe ? with jailbroken iphones? I never owned a iPhone, never will).

Can't you simply then , just use the phone for whatever you want to do on the go ? What is your goal ? Most of us are contempt with our phones for our "computer" needs...

 

[Deleted member 446461]

Can't you simply then , just use the phone for whatever you want to do on the go ? What is your goal ? Most of us are contempt with our phones for our "computer" needs...

Do whatever a GPD Win does but of a cheap way.
And no. I don't want to use a phone.

 

[Roamin64]

4096×2304 @24Hz for the GPD win,

3DS : Top screen is 800 x 240 pixels (400 x 240 pixels per eye), and bottom touch screen is 320 x 240 pixels.

You've already lost.

 

[Deleted member 446461]

4096×2304 @24Hz for the GPD win,

3DS : Top screen is 800 x 240 pixels (400 x 240 pixels per eye), and bottom touch screen is 320 x 240 pixels.

You've already lost.

I wouldn't count pixels.
I would count what it runs. Which is why I'm looking for a PC>3DS streamer.
Also, I don't know why, but I think 3D mode looks more crispy than 2D.

 

[Kwyjor]

And no. I don't want to use a phone.

What possible advantage could any of this have over a decent phone?

 

[Deleted member 446461]

What possible advantage could any of this have over a decent phone?

Pff.

- Does a phone have a physical keyboard?
- Can a phone run Cuphead?
- Could a phone not spy on you and still be customizable?
- Can a phone change OS without some kind of crazy modding?
- Can a phone boot from USB?
- Can a phone even have full control over USB?
- Could the resources of a phone be upgradeable?
- Can a phone have a proper 7-zip archiver?
- Could a phone ever get a decent file manager?
- Could a phone ever be useful about anything else than making a mobile data hotspot and communicating?

I prefer PC Master Race.

And finally, I do not have modern phones. The most modern we had fell into a toilet.
Trust me. I'd want one to play Pokémon GO. That's my only excuse to have an ungoogled Android.

We can't buy any more. Check the icon of my country.

 

[Kwyjor]

- Does a phone have a physical keyboard?

Does a 3DS?

I mean, yes, a PC has many obvious advantages over a phone, but you're talking about a laptop you'll be carrying around in your backpack and streaming to your 3DS. Are you saying you're going to pull this laptop out and stick a USB drive in it so you can boot to a different OS that will stream to your 3DS..? And you'll also have an urgent need to unzip files? Not to mention most of a laptop's components aren't particularly upgradable either. None of this makes much sense.

(And yes, there are many perfectly adequate file managers and archiving utilities for phones, and they're not restricted to running at a resolution of 400 x 240 .)

 

[Magsor]

I have been in computers all my life and I will say this: Modern chipset are way better than even a few years back. You should NOT salvage an old laptop they are bad compared to a modern computer for many reasons. Battery life is one. my computer now can pull like 6 hours of cuphead that is way too much...

 

[Deleted member 446461]

I have been in computers all my life and I will say this: Modern chipset are way better than even a few years back. You should NOT salvage an old laptop they are bad compared to a modern computer for many reasons. Battery life is one. my computer now can pull like 6 hours of cuphead that is way too much...

I'd wish to get a GPD Win, but my country has been damned by its president. Check the flag of my country. Which is it?

 

[Magsor]

I'd wish to get a GPD Win, but my country has been damned by its president. Check the flag of my country. Which is it?

You miss my point. GPD win has an old chipset. I don<t care how you get your laptop but don<t get one from 2017. a cheaper 2018 is better or a nuc pc. If you "portabilize something" you will need part from the internet . same shit same smell.

 

[Deleted member 446461]

You miss my point. GPD win has an old chipset. I don<t care how you get your laptop but don<t get one from 2017. a cheaper 2018 is better or a nuc pc. If you "portabilize something" you will need part from the internet . same shit same smell.

Oh.

I have been in computers all my life and I will say this: Modern chipset are way better than even a few years back. You should NOT salvage an old laptop they are bad compared to a modern computer for many reasons. Battery life is one. my computer now can pull like 6 hours of cuphead that is way too much...

In that case, does a GPD Win 2 have a newer chipset?

 

[Deleted member 446461]

Yeah, don't worry at all about SSD lifespans. I've got a "cheapo" Sandisk SSD from like 2012 that's well into 600TB+ writes at this point as an OS drive over 8 years and 3 system changes, well over 5x its "rated" write life, and it's still operating just as fine as it was when I got it (with only a few reallocated sectors.)

SSD lifespans are literally nothing to worry about unless you're rewriting the entire SSD multiple times every single day for months at a time. A potato Corsair SSD lasted for 1.2 petabytes of writes in 2015 before it catastrophically failed after being utterly murdered with writes 24 hours straight for 18 months. If you ever do that many writes to your SSD in the next 10 years, I'll eat every shoe in my house.

O.K then. I have found some SanDisk SSDs in my country. They are all "SanDisk SSD Plus" around 200-400 GB and 1 TB from what I have seen until now (yes, you live with 2 TB storage devices, don't rub it in my face), but I am not sure if those are truly worth the money. Do you know if the SanDisk SSD Plus is truly reliable, if it lasts 10 years or more, or if it dies in less than 3 years?

Also, can SSD successfully become read-only when they reach their death without damaging any data?

EDIT: They ain't buying anything to upgrade my laptop. They think that if it's "used with care", it will last forever, and if I "upgrade 'n stuff", it will die faster, with the excuse of my grandma's laptop having lasted 10 years with the same HDD.

They changed OS once... to clean a malware infection.

Also, there's no way for a 15-year old to make money here at Venezuela. There's no job for me... for now. And I don't get money for helping with house mantainment, the culture here is different. We don't even pay Internet by how much bytes we download/upload, we pay Internet by how much time we use it. The only person I know wins money by helping with house mantainment is my cousin, and he has gone to Dominican Republic the past year.

I got this computer the past year I believe. Will I be safe of data loss?

 

[mortintoj]

Although what you said is not very possible, there are small handheld computers with CPUs like 1065g7 and 16GB of memory. Models like GPD WIN MAX or ONEMIX pro3 are very expensive. Under the same hardware performance, the smaller the size of the computer, the more money you need to pay.