The Trimui Smart is a pretty unusual early handheld. Unlike the big “shanzhai” makers who lean on the open-source community to supply a “usable system,” Trimui has always built its own custom system, and it actually works well.

Most people know the later Trimui Smart Pro, the handheld that claims it can play PSP — though not comfortably — and whose real selling point is killer standby time (the perk of a custom system is deep optimization), plus the Trimui Brick that carried on the Smart Pro’s traits, and so on…

I’ve actually used both the Trimui Smart Pro and the Trimui Brick, and sold them later. Not because the system was bad — mainly because the build quality was so poor. Burrs everywhere, and the buttons are stiff as hell…

But today we’re not talking about those two. We’re talking about the Trimui Smart, the first product in the line.

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I once had a chance to be among the first people using a Loongson laptop, but I let it slip. Later, when Loongson was clearing out that batch of laptops on its official site for a mere 300 yuan, I didn’t bite either — and then that batch went up in price because it was the same model Stallman used. Kind of absurd. But given how RAM prices have shot up, upgrading a computer with a new machine is basically hopeless now, so I figured I’d mess around with Xinchuang and get ready for the day domestic hardware takes over my workplace. Maybe all these weird things I’m tinkering with now will be what I have to use at work. If I have to try it eventually, might as well try it early.

So a while back, with a friend’s help, I got my hands on a Loongson laptop — the kind with the most stock and the hottest demand on secondhand marketplaces right now. The machine is brand new: 3A6000 + 16G + 512G. The manufacturer is Chengmai, though the seller said, “They’re all made by Chengmai, I’ve got several brands stickered on the back here, which one do you want?” In the end I picked the one with a dragon on the back — at least it can be compared to Apple…

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A while back, Bilibili got flooded with videos with basically the same title — mostly “I built a tiny game console” or “I made my own retro handheld.”

Most of these handhelds look surprisingly well designed and are genuinely tiny. Usually a 2.8-inch screen, two buttons (A and B), and a TF card slot for the system and data.

The designers generally open-source their models and files, so you can print and build one yourself. They do look pretty nice.

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Intel-lpmd: short for “Intel Low Power Mode Daemon,” an official Intel background service that claims to improve “big.LITTLE scheduling.” It’s first-party, so it must have something going for it. Officially it only supports big.LITTLE chips anyway — running it on a non-hybrid CPU is pointless. And the whole thing is built around per-model tuning: users or OEMs can drop in dedicated XML configs to optimize power.

I bring this up because Fedora apparently started installing it by default a while back, and even more conveniently, Fedora pushed a version update recently that added support for two more CPUs: Arrow Lake-H and WildCat Lake.

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A batch of HP docks showed up on eBay recently for 69 yuan with free shipping. Full name: Elite X3 Lapdock. It was originally made to pair with HP’s own Windows Phone handsets, but thanks to the well-known reasons, the Windows Phone market is completely dead, and this thing is now an awkward orphan nobody wants.

Like most people, I had fantasies about it too. Could this be a cheap TNT Go? So I grabbed one to find out.

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HookSoft, the old standby that churns out new releases on an assembly line, is back with a new game, and this time the theme is “love triangle.” Honestly, I was a little surprised. For a veteran brand built on pure love, you’d expect something closer to a one-click harem picker, not material that gives you stomach cramps, not a love triangle that has you two-timing and edging toward NTR territory.

But given how the Japanese visual novel market keeps sliding, I get it — without something explosive, you don’t get buzz or traffic. And the first launch after release genuinely impressed me. The game throws out the old bullshit 720p resolution entirely, moving to 1080p and beyond, adds animated expressions so the heroines can change faces and blink (old tech, sure), and pads things out with a pile of useful and useless chart-based staging and kaomoji stickers to boost the comic feel. At least it looks lively, way more alive than the old flat talking-head simulator.

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Preface

Maybe you get old and start getting nostalgic. Lately everything new feels boring to me, and I’ve been missing the past. So I got the urge to build an “old computer” — install Win98, WinXP, or even Windows 7 on something. The Win9X and XP eras seemed like a hassle, so I decided to start with Win7.

The other reason I went with Win7 is that I spotted a batch of cheap new-old-stock laptops on eBay: the Dell Latitude 3340, the first generation, the Haswell one. Stock config is 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD, and the key point is “brand new old stock” — compared with those ThinkPads that have been flipped who-knows-how-many times, that’s one advantage.

After some research I found this thing drives Windows 7 perfectly. Even the weird Intel integrated HD4600 can utterly demolish retro games from the Windows 7 era, so it’s a solid choice for revisiting stuff from around 2010. With that beautiful fantasy in mind, I bought this new-old-stock machine.

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I’ve been playing visual novels again lately, so I started looking for a new device. The reason I didn’t just keep using the Rog Ally X handheld is mainly that it’s inconvenient for slacking off — one look and it’s obviously a game console, way too conspicuous.

So I started shopping around. My budget is really limited, so I unexpectedly found that a batch of these has recently shown up on the secondhand market: the Lenovo Kaitian D10. Plenty are advertised as being in great condition, but I figure they were probably recycled from somewhere too.

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If you’ve used Windows, especially on a Surface, you probably remember that built-in face unlock fondly. Later it got even better on ThinkPads — the screen only lights up when you’re sitting in front of it, and the laptop locks itself once you walk away…

So what about the Linux world? Is there anything that pulls off the same trick?

Just like the endless supply of excellent yuri fanfic out there, Linux has similar solutions. The old standby was a project called Howdy. It used a fairly traditional IR-based recognition method, essentially requiring an IR camera, and the whole thing was written on top of Python. Old, slow, and you’d frequently crack open the lid and then sit there waiting several seconds for it to react. I did actually run it back in the day on a 5th-gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Barely usable is the best I can say — so bad I couldn’t even be bothered to write about it.

Times change, though. There’s a new solution now: Gaze, which is what I want to talk about here.

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Years back, Cube put out an 8-inch tablet called the Palm Play Mini. The whole point was that it was dirt cheap, and it took a SIM card. Only 4GB of RAM, weak CPU, but cheap. At a price that low, every other flaw stops mattering.

Then the product started listening to users. “Upgrade X and I’ll buy one,” they said, so it upgraded, and upgraded, and upgraded. Fewer people bought it, the price climbed, and the series felt like it was on its deathbed. Cube’s He Mengnan disappeared from view, and the thing lost its entire selling point.

So I’m scrolling Pinduoduo and see a tablet, brand new, 350-odd yuan shipped. It arrives and the box says “Suishengting” — sealed, never opened. But apart from the brand name, the specs and a few details told me everything: this is Cube’s 8-inch Palm Play Mini.

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