GPD Pocket

By Paul O’Brien

Around 10 years ago, the computing world was obsessed with the idea of ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs). Although there were some impressive devices for the time (the Sony Vaio and Toshiba Libretto, for example), the reality was that the technology wasn’t available to make the machines viable for most users.

The small screens were low resolution and low quality, processors were power hungry and ran hot and, most importantly, battery technology meant an hour or two of runtime at best. Now technology has moved on and it’s much more feasible to create tiny PCs, but we don’t tend to see them – smartphones and tablet PCs more commonly fulfil that need.

A relatively unknown Chinese company is looking to change that, with the GPD Pocket mini PC – complete with Ubuntu support. The GPD Pocket was initially launched on crowdfunding site Indiegogo. The campaign not only hit 1,516% of its target with $3.5 million (around £2.6 million) raised, but the firm in question – GPD – was also able to build upon previous experience manufacturing these types of devices to bring the Pocket to fruition (its previous product, the GPD Win, was a popular 5.5-inch Windows-based gaming machine).

Before we dive into the …read more

Source:: techradar.com – PC and Mac