Apparently it’s been a few years since I last yelled into the void about what laptop I use. Well, in that time, a lot has changed. First off, I gave my prized collection of x230 ThinkPads (and a few others) to my sisters, nieces, and nephews. Apparently they’re all broken at this point and I’m not allowed to have them back for repairs. Because of this, I got myself an x250, which was my main laptop for about two years before I gave it to my mother-in-law.
Back when I did my Model M thingy with CircuitPython, I encountered a lot of difficulties doing I/O. For one, the I/O speed was much too slow for bit-banging anything in Python. Now, you could write some C and call it from Python, but that defeats the benefit of working with Python to begin with. Additionally, hardware peripherals seemed to be destined to be behind in Python. I doubt this will ever change, but a certain recent product seems to offer a bizarre best-of-all-worlds.
As I mentioned in my post about my mental health, I am using an X230 as my personal daily driver. I have yet to go completely crazy and swap the keyboard for an X220 keyboard (which I’m actually not sure I’d want to do - I like both keyboards and can’t say for certain which I like more), nor have I upgraded the display to either an IPS 12” or 13” panel (which I am more keen on doing when I have the money).
This story is going to seem like it is going nowhere, but trust me, it only kind of goes nowhere. Last year, someone asked me for advice on a pair of headphones for under $50, so I started watching random collections of tech stuff under $50. This led me to randomfrankp. After finding out that he was an Eagles fan, I decided to keep watching his videos, and eventually I saw the single best looking computer mouse of all time.
I have gone completely insane. Within the month of May, I have ordered four ThinkPads. X201 Tablet My first purchase was an X201 Tablet, with an i7-640LM, and 4GB of RAM. It came with a battery and a charger, but no storage. I slapped in a 120GB SSD with Arch Linux, and all was well. I also spent $18 on a new pen for it. The laptop itself was $57 off eBay.
Back when I did my arcade machine, I encountered two pretty big problems. First of all, writing the code to mimick a USB keyboard was not straightforward at all, and I resorted to copying some sample code and modifying it. But I didn’t understand the sample code at all. I know the TI boards are probably aimed at a more hardcode audience, one that wants to have as much control over the hardware as possibl, and while I usually love that sort of thing, there are days where I want to just write simple code.