Garbage Terminal: Part 3

 

So, I have this more or less built out, at least in its draft form. The 3D printing process did not go particularly well, which is not a surprise, I have a cheap printer and a very drafty house, so getting a good clean print is rather difficult. However, for version 0.95 I am not going to complain much. It pretty much does what I need it to do and it was built entirely out of parts I had on hand.

The first question of course, is it usable? Well, yes, however is it practical? No. Honestly I would not try to do any meaningful work on this terminal at all. It does not feel comfortable to hold, nor does the keyboard feel right. and the screen is too small for my old eyes.

On top of the feel, the Raspberry Pi Zero is just not designed to be useful in this sort of capacity. The CPU is too slow and the memory is too limited. If I were buying the parts for this today, I would have went for a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 and a much better miniature keyboard, but even then I am not sure it would be terribly useful for anything, even with a GUI and a touchscreen.

Of course this also leads me to wonder if buying a professionally built hand terminal would be all that useful too me either. There is nothing this can do that a laptop can't do or heck, a bit of hacking and my phone could do most of it. Both of those options would be more useful and more comfortable to use. So yeah, realistically I think I will pass on the idea of a hand terminal.