Jackie's Fridge

Another vote for the T480. I have a T480s running Mint and it’s been lovely. No driver issues and for office/light media creation/consumption it seems to work without a hitch.

Little Kitty Big City. It’s cute & charming, a little glitchy here and there, and makes me smile. I’m not trying to speed run the thing, just collecting hats and trying to hit all the goals.

Rockbox is a bad benchmark due to its insane versatility. Just because modern players “should” support something doesn’t mean the manufacturer put the work in to do so, or even do it well.

That said, when I buy a portable music player the decision is always based on whether or not there’s a Rockbox port for it.

I haven’t seen anybody mention failing systems. These consoles are all old enough that some TLC may be required soon to replace failing capacitors, etc. If you’re good with that and the (light) headaches involved in connecting old consoles to new TVs, there are solid recommendations in this discussion.

If you’re okay with emulation, the Anbernic RG351MP (or the newer 353) will play games from Atari 2600 through PlayStation 1, including arcade machines and old DOS games. The Anbernic hardware is very nice and exceptionally portable.

Steam Deck and Nintendo New 3DS are also phenomenal emulators for old games, but require some setup.

I’m a member of a Discord that is the primary source of discussion and information about a piece of hardware, including technical & usage tips, firmware announcements, etc. It’s a terrible way to track this stuff.

That said, the only other forums that have decent communities around it are Reddit, Facebook, and Elektronauts - none of which are even close to as active, but in which many of us will post important info & tips to get the news out. Over 3 years into the project (which is not open source) it would be ridiculous to try shifting the whole community to a new platform. We’re kinda stuck.

Luckily the community as a whole seems to realise this, so we happily answer noob questions over and over and provide links to the appropriate resources, discussions, and pinned posts without snark or judgement. We’ve all been there. It’s the nature of the beast, it’s not efficient, and it’s not the end of the world.

Finally, with the state of search engines in decline due to monetisation, encroachment of AI bloat, and general enshittification, it’s a matter of time before very little real information will be easily searchable. Insular communities who decide to withdraw and do everything their own, better way will likely become the norm. The internet needs a reset anyway.

Rockbox *is…

It’s still going.

In the board game theme, have you tried any 2-player abstract strategy games? Some of my favourites include:

Quarto (complex 4-in-a-row game with a twist: your opponent chooses the piece you must play)

Quixo (from the same publisher, Gigamic - tic tac toe on steroids with an ever-changing board)

Hive (each piece moves a certain way, very portable defend-the-queen game)

Tak (simple rules, deep strategy - connect opposite edges of the board while preventing your opponent from doing it)

Not strategy, but abstract speed game: Nine Tiles by Japanese company Oink Games (not Nine Tiles Panic, tho that one isn’t bad). Oink has very clever, easily packable party games and a few can be played with two people.

How techy are you? I was eyeing up and may give it a shot in the new year.

Edit: odd Boost doesn’t show my linked text. Just in case - https://deckhd.com/