I bought a bundle on Fanatical and ended up being sent one of these vouchers afterwards. I've got no desire to buy anything from JSAUX, so assuming that the code will work if I give it to someone else, please PM me if you want the thing - first come, first served, obviously.

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Quoting: BlackBloodRumTo many people simply accept being treated like a certain brown substance, and some even wear it as a badge of honour. Until those people take a stand as well, nothing will change.

Sad but true. I once knew some gamers who took the view that people had no right to complain about or choose not to buy overpriced DLC that wasn't reflective of what the customer-base actually wanted to see, and insisted that everybody should simply be grateful for its very existence and pay up, just because they'd been suckered in. Quite sad to see.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismThanks I added it to my radar,

No problem! It doesn't seem to be mentioned on the Steam listing, but Bail or Jail does have local split-screen, so if you're using external monitors it should definitely be alright.

Quoting: ElectricPrismI often use the term LAN ambiguously loosely. However with the world events of the last few years and the Internet not being guaranteed with possible war on the horizon I am skewing away from putting my eggs in just one basket.

So -- "That Offline LAN functionality" has increased in value to me as a consumer -- I bought and downloaded a bunch of games on GOG (and I don't even really like GOG that much) just because they're more future-proof ready to go if the Internet goes out.

Like fellow GOL'er StoneColdSpider, I make my home-base in Emulationville, so outage-proof future-proofing lies with the classics, for me.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismEdit: On that last note @gamedevs -- I am starting to look to buy multiplayer games where say 4-8 Deck gamers can play a thing together that is really fun in-person. It's sort-of hard to navigate the Steam Store to find this kind of thing.

Not a dev, and I don't even know if the game that I'm namedropping here has LAN support, but I'd imagine that Bail or Jail (Obakeidoro!) would be a riot when played like this.

Quoting: MayeulCAn awesome feature would be "family sharing" over P2P wifi for Steam decks: throw an impromptu LAN party, only one game copy needed. IIRC PSP (or was it DS? Game Boy?) used to work like that.

The Nintendo DS did this, as did a few Game Boy Advance games.

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Quoting: CruelAngelI would like to add one other thing that makes the Deck a bit nieche besides the above listed: Its size.

The deck is huge and heavy. So while you can use it as a handheld its not really comparable to the handhelds of 1-2 generations ago where they were akin to mobile phones in size, you could just slip in your pocket and maybe play a bit even while commuting in a crowded vehicle. (To be fair the switch too is also large, but the deck is even larger)

This may not be as much of an issue as it appears - handhelds have been skewing towards being bigger for a few generations now, and if I'm remembering right (though I admit it has been a while), the best-selling iterations of several of Nintendo's handhelds were the "LL"/"XL" versions, when available. This even got to the point where the standard-sized version of the New 3DS revision of the Nintendo 3DS skipped the company's biggest market of North America altogether.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeWait, what? Who is requiring webcams to be uncovered? Most of the laptops I'm seeing now actually have built in shutters for them (maybe that's just Lenovo / Asus?) The Thinkpads have been including those for years.

Upon checking I found that I had slightly misremembered the details on this - my bad, I apologise, as I certainly didn't mean to get it wrong!

Uncovered wasn't in the requirement, but a whole bunch of other things were, including the user-facing webcam itself being mandatory, and required to have an HD resolution, auto-focus, auto white-balance, to be at eye-level, and to have a particular field of view.

I'd rather be able to get a laptop without one as I find a super-specific requirement like this to sound rather off, to say the least, which is doubtless what caused me to misremember this!

The specifics can be viewed in various places. I've just pulled this one and this one from a quick search;

QuoteAn exclusive document sent by Microsoft to OEMs detailing requirements for webcams, microphones, speakers, and real-time collaboration in general for entry-level, mainstream, and premium laptops has surfaced thanks to NotebookCheck. The document even mentions the “impact” if manufacturers fail to implement the requirements. Per the requirements, Microsoft has made it mandatory for all premium laptops to have a 1080p 30fps webcam with a horizontal field of view of 75º and a vertical field of view of 60º. Entry-level laptops can still use 720p webcams but their dynamic range should be ≥33 dB while spatial and temporal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) should be ≥30 dB and ≥33 dB respectively. Mainstream Windows laptops can also have 720p webcams but with support for ≥20 fps at 20 lux and ≥30 fps at 80 lux. Two requirements that cut across categories are an LED that is visible when the webcam is on and a webcam that is at eye level. The latter puts an end to manufacturers who experiment with awkward webcam placements such as placing it between the function keys on the keyboard.

QuoteBut Microsoft’s goal is a bit complicated. In its hardware requirements document, the company also states that Windows 11 laptop webcams must have an HD resolution and support for auto-focus and auto-white balance. These requirements will greatly improve the user experience on budget machines, though they may increase manufacturing costs.

Apparently, machines sold after January of 2023 which don't meet this requirement can't run Windows 11 at all. I really don't like this sort of removal of user-choice.

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Quoting: fabertaweMy original EeePC is 16 years old and still going strong! I put Ubuntu on it as soon as I had it though. It was used for years (daily, up until a couple of years ago) as my daughter's media centre (with Arch) and never a problem with the hardware failing, surprisingly.

They were built like little tanks - one of my favourite traits in a laptop!

I stuck with the stock OS (a somewhat chopped-up Xandros, wasn't it?) and modified it to enable a full desktop, since it was my first Linux machine and I just wanted to poke at it and see what I could do. The first thing I did was to compile an emulator from source - not because I needed to, but just because I wanted to so that I knew how to. Fun times.

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Quoting: MrowlNow is the perfect time for Valve to consider releasing a "Steam Deck Mini", and sell it at the same $399 starting price point, but perhaps with 128GB eMMC, instead of 64?

All these companies keep using Steam Deck's large size as a selling point for their product, so a Steam Deck Mini would just outright kill that rhetoric.

It should use the same tech specs as the Deck, but with a larger capacity battery (50Wh, instead of 40Wh). And no, it doesn't need to have an OLED screen, it just needs to have a more vibrant IPS screen, with higher SRGB range (Steam Deck currently only covers around 60-68%).

If they can't do a Joy-Con style design, then they should consider taking off the trackpads, and emulating their functionality via "virtual trackpads" on the touchscreen. It wouldn't be as good as the physical ones, but it's better than nothing.

Lastly, I really want to see removable front and back plates, so we can customise the entire look of the thing. I would like to see the same level of modularity and user-replaceability, too.

A Steam Deck Mini exactly as you describe here sounds exactly like the sort of thing that I would want to buy, and I know a few other folks for whom that would tick exactly the right boxes for convenient PC gaming. I would love to see this, and if it comes along before I manage to get a standard Steam Deck, it's what I'd go for.

Quoting: UberkeyserThat time ASUS took the time to explain that the device needs a special desktop for the low spec CPU, tiny SSD and the small screen.
People refused to think and still demanded Windows.
So ASUS evetually shipped EeePCs with Windows.
People's reaction: Oi, we dont like this. Windows does not work well with the low spec CPU, the tiny SSD the small screen...
So ASUS incrased CPU, SSD, sceen... and price... to adjust to the needs of Windows, essentially killing the original idea of a netbook.... but it rans Windows well.

I was around that community back then, and for a great many users it was the same as with anything else - they were happy with what it came with and just wanted to learn more about using it.

That said, there were certainly those who sought to seed the idea that people should be asking for Windows on those devices, but from what I saw they were never the majority, at least amongst genuine users.

Quoting: KlaasThat story still makes me sad.

Same. That was how I got started with Linux, and then a category of portables that I particularly liked* went away far too soon.

*I'm a portables enthusiast across the board, and affordable mini laptops were a fab idea for so many use-cases.

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I won't have any need for a new laptop for some time, but with all of the unsavoury additions that're being made to modern mass-market laptops these days (more means to prevent users from installing their OS of choice, requirements from a certain OS vendor for uncovered webcams, etc.), it's really good to see that we've got companies in the Linux sphere who can now make them in-house!

As for the keyboard layout, though I'm not sure about the dual space-bars, the Launch layout looks like a pretty good fit for a laptop - it reminds me a lot of the layout on the old Toshiba Satellites back in the late 1990s, which I got along very well with.

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Quoting: mrdeathjrSee here

Ah, thanks very much! I thought it was funny for it not to be listed, but I can never be sure!

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