GPD Pocket

I've had a clearout - the Omnibooks have gone (except the 300), the Lifebook U810 has gone, the Zaurus SL-C1000 has gone. In their place I have a GPD Pocket which I helped crowdfund on Indiegogo...not that they needed it, they exceeded their target by something like 1500%.

I ordered the Windows version since I wanted something that pretty much worked out of the box since I expected the Ubuntu port would be a bit rough. This turned out to be case since GPD hadn't really done Linux before and Intel's docs for the Cherry Trail platform are woeful. However, the community has now stepped up and there are several flavours which now perform quite acceptably.  I'll probably get round to trying some in due course.

It's a lovely little device which you can read about elsewhere online (seriously, just Google it) but I can say I haven't really had any of the problems that others have reported. It's one of the first run of the devices and I haven't even done the "standard" mods like flashing the unlocked BIOS or replacing the thermal compound on the heatsink. Keyboard is not a problem - it's huge compared to the U810 or the Zaurus - and I never liked trackpads anyway so the trackpoint is just fine.

However, on to the the main topic of this posting. Since the Pocket is running Windows 10, that is definitely going to need some work before I consider it usable. It's interesting how much better the Linux "out-of-the-box experience" generally is (when all the drivers work)...which is a bit of a turnaround. Then again, the following process is all about making Windows as Linux-like as possible! 

1. Wait an age while Windows updates and reboots, updates and reboots while attempting to index the contents of the SSD. So turn off the indexing service to speed things up...and probably never turn it on again since it never seems to be any use to me.
2. Install NTLite and prune out the cruft - like all the apps, the App Store, Cortana etc. that take up space and, on occasion, CPU and thus battery power. After that, the Windows 10 tile menus start to look a bit empty...   
3. Install Classic Shell to get some nice sensible menus. I favour Classic style menus.
4. Install Spybot Anti-Beacon to shut off most of Microsoft's snooping. Default settings seem to work best - delve too deeply into the optional settings and you can break updates which is probably worse from a security point of view than the meagre trickle of data that remains.
5. Install WinXCorners to make the half-baked multiple desktop implementation in Windows actually usable. I set it so the mouse in the top right corner shows all desktops for task switching - which is how I have it in Linux.
6. Install ThrottleStop to better manage the CPU power draw - I have the following config:
1. CPU Voltage ID reduced to 0.6650. I'm not sure that the number displayed is right but it does drop power consumption noticeably. Any lower and I get occasional blue screens.
2. Turbo Power Limits (TPL Button) configured with:
1. Package power long: 3W (this is the long term average power limit)
2. Package power short: 5W (this allows short bursts above the average up to the turbo time limit)
3. Turbo time limit: 10s
3. Low power profile that disables turbo (limits the CPU to 1.6Ghz)
4. Default power profile that allows full turbo to 2.56GHz
5. I did some tests with Geekbench 3 to test the various power levels. At 5W, all the cores will turbo up to 2.56 GHz, at 4W only two cores can spin up, and at 3W only one core will boost and even then only to around 2.4GHz. At the 2W notional "scenario design power" it appears that only one core can even reach 1.6Ghz, which is basically unusable, so Intel have been rather creative with the figures. 
6. Also, note that this does not factor in GPU power consumption since I don't really game much on the GPD. If you do then you'll need to add a watt or two to the package limits.
7. With these settings I will get typically 8-10 hours of use during the day - web browsing, document editing, emailing and Skyping - which suits me fine.
7. Install the rest of the Open Source stack that I use
1.  NextCloud I always sync everything (phone/laptop etc.) to my own servers. Nothing that I can't afford to lose goes into anyone's cloud!
2.  LibreOffice of course
3. I do a fair bit of image management from my camera (that's another post!) so RawTherapee and Digikam although I am now looking at DarkTable since they have a Windows version now.
4. Firefox and Thunderbird - Firefox Quantum is really looking rather good!
5. Password Gorilla
8. And a couple of proprietary but free goodies
1. Microsoft Research's Image Composite Editor which is a really very good panorama stitcher that runs a treat on the Pocket. Whatever you think of MS as a whole, the guys at MS Research do some really good stuff.
2. Foxit Reader the least annoying PDF viewer that I have encountered

...and there you have it.