CrowView Note, Empowering Your Device as a Laptop (useless?)

[DiTBho]

CrowView Note: Empowering Your Device as a Laptop
So, it's here ...

keyboard
LCD
Type-C
Built-in 5000mAh battery

umm ... 

[DiTBho]

People today enjoy a more diversified life, making work no longer confined to the office. However, using a smartphone for work can be inconvenient due to its small screen, and setting up single-board computers with various peripherals can be cumbersome.

That's why we designed the CrowView Note, empowering all your devices as laptops. This all-in-one portable monitor is compatible with smartphones, single-board computers such as Raspberry Pi 5 and Jetson Nano, mini PCs, and gaming consoles. It provides a clean, organized workspace, enhancing your productivity anywhere.

(why?)

[Infraviolet]

"...compatible with smartphones, single-board computers such as Raspberry Pi 5... gaming consoles"
Largely then, things which can't run normal x86 programs. The things that laptops, apart from web browsing for which the major browsers have been made available for non x86 hardware, are used for is generally running programs which are x86 dependent. The crowview also looks to cost rather more than the sum of getting a refurbished laptop and a brand new SSD for it and spares for any other parts that might have worn out over time, if you need a cheap extra laptop you'd be better off getting a cheap extra laptop.

[abeyer]

(why?)

I'd love to have had one of these for debug/failsafe console access when I did work in labs or datacenters with lots of headless machines.... particularly in places with security restrictions, carrying a normal laptop around might not be allowed, to prevent someone dumping data and carrying it out, but this would be a nice dumb terminal only option. A datacenter could even just keep a cart of these to check out when you go in, rather than installing kvms and consoles every rack... just pick one up, plug it in where you need it, and then drop it off on your way out.

I suspect that's not actually their intent, and they're targeting the hobby RPi & SBC market, given their other products, but still, I think there are some nice use cases for this.

[DiTBho]

carrying a normal laptop around might not be allowed, to prevent someone dumping data and carrying it out

I work in avionics, I have this kind of restrictions, but it's not a problem at all.

You use either SunRay terminals in laptop shape, that do wifi bootstrap from Solaris servers (and only run Java), or you use laptops that do network bootstrap, they have no internal storage device, and have all the expansion ports sealed. So, no USB ports available.

These laptops only run approvd testing applications.

In addition to the fact that you can't bring personal laptops, and that every authorized laptop must have a tag approved by the security department, all things that are regularly checked by the security guys.

So, a product like this, on the other hand, seems to me to be a serious security flaw, for the simple fact that it forces one to have to grant an account.

[abeyer]

So, a product like this, on the other hand, seems to me to be a serious security flaw, for the simple fact that it forces one to have to grant an account.

The primary use for physically plugging in would be a failsafe if a machine gets stuck in early boot/bootloader/bios etc... and can't boot to a network connection/LOM at all. In such cases you're not going to be doing network auth, and typically would have a hardware kvm console setup with the same requirement... so I don't see how you avoid needing to give people who handle such scenarios access anyway.

[DiTBho]

so I don't see how you avoid needing to give people who handle such scenarios access anyway.

The point is that in these cases we have to call the responsible team rather than trying to restart a service.

In every rack there is always a KVM drawer with keyboard and mouse, but the drawer is locked, and none of us have the keys.
Both physical keys to open the drawer, and admin password.