One definite trend with a lot of my writing tends to be a desire to give new types of gadgets a shot before much of the rest of the world gets their hands on them.
This doesn’t necessarily mean things like new MacBooks or Surface devices—I don’t have the connections for things like that just yet. But I have found a little niche as someone who writes about new things before they’ve really found an audience or a market.
And with that in mind, I’m writing this in Ghostwriter, a Linux app, on a
JingPad A1, a new type of Linux-first tablet ($699 without keyboard, $899 with … more on that keyboard in a second) that I think has a lot to offer the regular person if they ever do get their hands on it.
(Admittedly, it took me a real long time to get my hands on it: The Indiegogo shipment left China at the beginning of October; it didn’t appear on my doorstep until Saturday afternoon, a combination of customs issues, problems with DHL, and an extra-slow FedEx delivery.)
I’ll be doing a full review of this device in the coming weeks (including a discussion of the hardware under the hood), but the thing that struck me from its early use is that, even with its clear rough edges, it somehow feels more polished than many Linux-first consumer offerings.