Pocket386 ultra-portable laptop quietly released with Win95 compatibility and uncommon processor

[Redaktion]

Retro computing products are something plenty of tech enthusiasts love. Pocket has just expanded the list of currently available retro products by releasing the Pocket 386, an i386-compatible Windows 95 mini-laptop that is said to be compact enough to fit in a pocket. That being said, the product's dimensions (8.3″ x 4.7″ x 1.2″) imply said pocket should be pretty large in order to accomodate the "mini" laptop.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Pocket386-ultra-portable-laptop-quietly-released-with-Win95-compatibility-and-uncommon-processor.851832.0.html

[George]

Gosh - how we have forgotten the roots of the industry!!! LOL!!!

Forgetting for the moment that WindowsNT, WIN2000, WindowsXP or even OS/2 could operate (and DID!!) with as little as 2MB of memory, 8MB ought to be plenty!

Funny that MUCH of the basic stuff that we did with computers back in the 32bit era we are still doing today BUT NOW REQUIRES 8-32GB of memory and multicore 64bit CPU'S!!!

Ahh, 1st computer was 640x480 (IBM-VGA) then there was 800x600 & 1024x768.

Sadly, finding even a Linux distro that supports 32bit CPU's is getting harder and harder to do. I think all the major web browsers have dropped 32bit support as well as Steam.

I suppose you could use a 64bit computer and download games from GOG to load on this thing. :)

I wonder how much power it draws.

[Hunter2020]

386 not my cup of tea.  I have a couple of 1366x768 laptops which I consider very retro.  Some can even run DOS games outright from Windows XP.  My 1366x768 machines are obviously still a lot more useful in the modern world than those 386 systems.  If I remember correctly a decade ago you could buy a good second hand 386 system for $50-$100.  That $200+ price tags for piece of junk that cannot do jack seems a little ripoffy to me!

[Sergey]

could operate (and DID!!) with as little as 2MB of memory, 8MB ought to be plenty!

That's right.... every consecutive Windows release up the use of RAM and hard disk space by quite a noticeable margin. Often for no good reason. But RAM is pretty inexpensive these days and so are SSDs, let alone HDDs, thankfully.

I wonder how much power it draws

The answer is "not a lot", I imagine. I have no idea how exactly that custom CPU works - does it process the instructions natively, does it do emulation - but it's certainly built with some relatively modern process such as 14 nm so at 40 MHz, it will be very cold and very frugal.

My 1366x768 machines are obviously still a lot more useful in the modern world than those 386 systems.

If they're running XP, they definitely are. We have half a dozen unofficial Chrome builds for XP now that make it possible to do regular Web browsing without major issues. I don't know if any antivirus/firewall maker still supports XP, though. I know for certain that Win7 and Win8.1 are still kind of supported. It was just the other day that I tried installing the free AVG antivirus on my Win7-running Aspire V5 laptop. It says its virus definitions are up to date but the core version has last been updated in H2 2022.