East German here. I have never met East Germans who called their home country Ostdeutschland before the Wende; that was very much a West German thing, and even then not as widespread as one might think (i. e. "DDR" was the much more common name amongst them). After the Wende it became (more of) a thing for Easterners as well, especially in context with the identity: Ostdeutsche(r).
Romanian here, the same applied here on all counts. Back in the '80s and going into the '90s we also used to name an infamous and poor Bucharest area as RFG (FRG in English), which was the capital letters of those three neighborhoods taken together as an acronym.
The keyboard layout is terrible on account of its misplaced trackball. There's a special hell reserved for people who design keyboards with trackballs below the numpad; that shit needs to be situated either in the middle of the typewriter keys, or directly below the space key(s), in line with the golden ratio and with some space to rest one's wrists.
It also can't compete against something like https://i.sstatic.net/QMf052nZ.jpg which is...err was Siemens 'tri-modal'/triple mode for BS2000, SINIX and 'normal' PC-modes.
Hrrm. Depends on what you mean by shitty? The looks? The typing feel and sound?
I actually quite liked some of them, having used them for years.
Another thing is that they were made according to ergonomic guidelines, which were mandatory to fulfill for many of their customers(Government, (former) government Telcos, and the likes).
So even if they were rubberdomed, they weren't absolute trash.
They could also be had in slightly different sizes, if you knew how to navigate the insanely bizarre ordering options, or knew about them in the first place, and had access. (Vee don't do fkn enduserz! Vee deal wiff big biz only! Go avay!)
That wasn't so 'ergonomic' at all ;->
This still applies to more or less enshittyfied contemporary stuff, made by Cherry, Logitech, Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, whomever.
It's a rack KVM keyboard and constrained thereby. The remainder was a heavy-duty shelf-drawer and a 14" CRT monitor. I decom'd a few of these in a very, very legacy facility a few years ago. They're decent keyboards.
> The opposite of ordinary is, of course, extraordinary.
Not just that: The ordinary is also the trivial, while the extraordinary is the relevant. In other words a dichotomy of who does not matter... and who does. And in the words of Maya Angelou: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time".
On that at least we agree (ignoring the rubbish about "AI", unless it describes an artificial intelligence with at least peer-level (i. e. human-level) agency, and not a language model). The same goes for the ridiculous, but for chatbot lovers certainly convenient, notion that art stops being art because money (or some other form of compensation) changed hands. That's just a reheated version of the tosh incompetents threw at artists since time immemorial. I remember the last time when it was very en vogue: the pathetic "anti-art" movements of the 90s.
And programming? Processes and their manifestations, depending on definitions of course, can indeed be art. Just like writing and its manifestations (e. g. poems, novels).
No need to go to Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, once required reading in many a school where I'm from; the logical conclusion and application of polysemy [1], amongst other things, should get the ball rolling just as well.
The banana isn't the art. The art is placing the banana in a gallery and art market context to make a funny and ironic comment about the gallery and art market context.
Programming is a craft. It's not an art, because creating code doesn't comment on, criticise, challenge, distill, or otherwise have anything to do with any human experience outside of programming.
Where’s the contradiction?? X can be just Y, and X can be much more than Y. No contradiction, just an observation that you can use it one way or another.
Nothing ever is just a tool. Saying that X "can just be a tool" is a fundamental violation of that statement; saying then "X can be much more than just a tool" is a violation in form of a contradiction. It's very easy to parse...
Eh, thickness doen't really bother me much as long as it's within reason as maintainability/repairability demands it. I just don't see a need to integrate a keyboard into the chassis. Unless you go for a T-hinge or ezel-style convertible. But why would you, when you can design a detachable, a form factor that's much more versatile?
And don't get me started on integrating (non-removable) gaming controls, or the terrible visual design that screams "I AM a GAMER!1!!". That might float for a device aiming for that specific market, but is a complete no-go for business professionals.
The funny thing is... Acer already had a rather excellent pro design: the ConceptD 7 Ezel Notebook [1]. Wacom EMR, Xeon W CPU, RTX 5000, 32 GB ECC-DDR4, two SSDs etc. Keep Wacom EMR, exchangeable ECC-RAM, dual-SSDs. Miniaturize to flicker-free DCI-P3 screen between 8 and 13-inches. Offer good support. Done.
It is, if a little bit overcomplicated and therefore prone to failures. HP had a competitive product in the HP x2 G4 detachable graphics workstation, which already conforms to a superior form factor: a 2-in-1 detachable. These days they churn out smallish 3-in-1s... but from a pro's perspective it's just machines full of bad compromises, complete with fugly gamerbro branding. I had hoped Framework would pick up the slack, but they bungled it with their underperforming F-12.
Acer following in Lenovo's footsteps with bizarre, overcomplicated contraptions.
The ideal form factor is already on the market for a productivity device like this: the 3-in-1 detachable. Make it maintainable (user replaceable battery, RAM, and two SSDs), get Wacom on board for some EMR magic, and add a pogo-pin attachable and Bluetooth-connectable keyboard folio that is essentially a modern IBM M4 or M4-1 Space Saver with trackpoint, trackball or a recessed analog stick. Have a nice docking option, too. How hard can it be?
Never had a personal smartphone, just work-issued ones that usually stay on-location after a shift. Yeah, it can drive people up the wall. I don't care lol.
Yeah I do have a smart phone but there's no way I'll install whatever crappy apps my work requires on it. Those all go on the company phone that gets powered off while I'm not working.
> [...] I've considered buying/tracking down a non functional one and putting a high performance ITX build into it a few times over the years.
I'd buy a classic keyboard case x86 (with PCMCIA card slot, Enhanced Personal Computer Keyboard layout plus integrated trackball), preferably made to last, made out of metal. Sadly, no one makes decent cases for something like a Vortex86. It's either weird mini towers to appeal to the nostalgia of the Old Breed, or cheap 3D-printed contraptions in the vein of stompboxes (for MiSTer implementations). Sad.
> [...] a C128. But for the latter the majority of time was spent in C64 mode.
Did you make use of CP/M applications? I often wonder how well that worked back in the day; one of my best friends had a Commodore 128, but used it exclusively as a 64 as well for his pal across the street owned a Brotkasten (breadbin).
No never. Booted it up. Didn't know what to do with it. Had zero software for it. Let it go.
That was pre-internet obviously and no one I knew ever used CPM
C128 was pretty much a scam. The computer itself was a trash can of disjointed parts put together from failed projects leftovers, and then Commodore decided to market it as an upgraded C64.
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