I grew weary of all the crashes. My Toshiba Laptop was dying, it crashed every day. I’m not talking about an app going unresponsive, or Windows locking up, those things were happening too, but I’m talking about catastrophic, blue-screen crashes; EVERY DAY! Whenever it happened it would take twenty minutes to bring Windows 7 back up and recover the manuscript or whatever I was working on. I’d had enough. Something needed to be done, but I couldn’t afford the average $800.00 cost of a new laptop, so I started shopping around and that’s when I ran across the Pocket PC.

I’ve been using this thing for about three weeks now and I have to tell you that I’m really happy with it so far. Now remember, I use it for work. That means word processing, primarily, with a little social media, e-mail and lots of research thrown in. It’s not a gaming computer, but it works fine with YouTube and other imbedded or streaming video or music services.
It runs on Windows 10 Pro, already installed, an upgrade I was planning anyway, but my laptop was not a perfect match for Windows 10 and there was the crash situation going on. For my work, I use Apache Open Office, but for reasons of compatibility with services I use regularly, I was considering a change to Microsoft Word. I’ve downloaded Open Office to my Pocket PC with no problems, but I went ahead and signed up for Microsoft Office 365. Both are working beautifully, but because I use OneNote every day, and for cross platform requirements, I’m now leaning more on Office 365.
I do a lot of traveling and that weighed heavily in my decision. We’re talking about a device that will literally fit in your shirt pocket, like your phone. It weighs 1.5 ounces and comes with a power brick and an HDMI extender cable. That’s it. You simply plug it into an HDMI driven TV or Monitor and, voila, your ready to role. I’m using a remote, wireless keyboard and mouse plugged into a USB port expander, adding three USB-2 ports where there was only one. To expand the 64Gig, on-board C: drive I’ve added a 128Gig micro SD card, as drive E:. I use it for downloads and storing various add-on applications. In addition, I’ve plugged a 256Gig thumb drive, F: into the highspeed USB-3 slot provided. I use it to store photos, videos and my productivity files.
Everything is working together smoothly and I couldn’t be happier with my choice, at just over $100.00. I’ve plugged it into a 20″ HDTV that was lying around the house, one that fits nicely on my writing desk. On my next trip I intend to purchase a 15.5″ portable HD monitor to take along with me, for just over $100.00.
The only negative I see in this is that the manufacturer, HIRUN, is a Chinese firm. That almost certainly means that the device contains a backdoor chip that can be used to collect and report information about you to the CCP. This is a big downside to me, but the reality is that any technology you buy today, and I mean any, is most likely spying on you anyway. If it’s not the Chinese government it will be your own government, or some third party, or, most likely, all three. Even so, I feel like I’ve made a good choice. Considering the price, this product is just what the doctor ordered for kids doing school online, or a dozen other applications, or a poor poet who needs an upgrade.