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Friday Fun Thread for January 5, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm surprised that throughout the past few weeks I've seen no discussion on handheld computing a la the Steam deck, so here it is.

I've fairly recently gotten my hands on a Steam deck OLED, and it's everything that I've wanted a modded PSP to be (maybe a touch too large). A higher quality brighter screen is a significant improvement from the old LCD I had from yesteryear. Having Arch OS behind the scenes comes at a significant benefit as well, as full software support means you can literally run common applications, Emulators, etc. with actual software support! Oh, and it can run steam games too, I guess.

Anyways, I think it goes to say I enjoyed messing around with it a lot and have actually started tackling a non-0 amount of my steam backlog. My hope is that the success of these handheld compute units will create incentives for Microsoft to actually take a look at a lightweight version of their OS for ease of use without the endless need for internet connection to send telemetry and personal information and maybe implement some battery-optimizing techniques. I'm not holding my breath but one can hope!

I might get into handheld devices about the time you can control them with a headset reading nerve impulses, and you 3d glasses with them.

Between hating bending my neck using phones and small devices not having keyboards or large screens, what kind of games can you even play on them ?

I definitely hear you on the neck bending! Avoiding the dreaded back hump is something I've always fought against due to how phones and laptops tend to leave you in bad posture positions.

The steam deck can have a (less refined) switch output where you can hook it up to a monitor or TV with a dock, so I frequently use it as a more open source switch which can run all my emulators easily. It has pretty stellar bluetooth as well so you can connect any controller you'd like to it.