I picked up a new 2-in-1 Chromebook recently for £171 ($233 inc tax) and it runs ChromeOS, Debian and Android and has twice the battery life and a higher resolution screen (that has touch too) than this does, which makes me question its value. I like the idea of a "lapdock", but I suspect you'd want a really good quality one (nice keyboard, good display and long battery life) so that you could use it for many years and attach multiple generations of phones, tablets and gaming devices for it to justify its existence. That would raise its price, which might be why this concept has struggled to take off.

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It's a good job they say that Linux is supported, because the specs page for the RP5 says it ships with Android 10 pre-installed! I think shipping an OS that is 5 major versions out of date would make you think twice about purchasing it and would certainly encourage you to wipe it and install Linux...

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The time limitation on Next Fest demos is indeed highly frustrating, especially since there's usually no indication on the demo page that it's time-limited or exactly when it'll be pulled (usually it's when Next Fest ends, but that's not always the case). What's equally annoying is that when the Next Fest-featured full game is launched, a demo doesn't re-appear for it. Maybe this change might make devs think about keeping Next Fest demos up for longer, but I wouldn't bet on it...

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Be warned that many of these demos "self-destruct" when the Next Fest ends. This wouldn't be so bad if this was made clear on each demo's page, but it usually isn't. Also annoying is that you may never see a demo of the game again once the Next Fest ends - quite often, the later on game launch of a Next Fest game isn't accompanied by a demo version!

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I wasn't a big fan of the original arcade game (I preferred Thrust on the BBC Micro if we're talking about retro spaceship games), but at £25 this is a hard pass for me. I suspect that, like the Atari Recharged games, this will end up as an Epic or Prime Gaming freebie in a year or so anyway.

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One frustrating thing I find about Steam Next Fest is that it's not obvious that the vast majority of the demos self-destruct after a certain number of days and, even worse, you're not told when a demo will disappear. I personally think Next Fest demos should stay up until at least the game is launched (and maybe even beyond that, possibly with a revision based on the launched full game).

There are far too many demos to try in just one week, so I end up having to quickly trawl through gaming sites (inc. GoL of course) for recommendations, install them all and then work through them. Snag is that even installed demos won't run if they've been pulled from Steam, which is another reason I find the whole experience unsatisfying.

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While the specs of the Pi 5 look good, the power consumption and thermals don't. I wouldn't recommend this for 24x7 operation (I'll stick to my Pi 2 for Pihole) and it looks like active cooling is a must. It thermally throttles under load without cooling - Phoronix showed up to 52% perf gain with active cooling added, which is huge.

The fact that the official Pi 5 case is the first official case to come with a fan says it all - it's a toaster in all but name :-) I'm skipping this one - I got a new 4GB Pi 4 for £35 from eBay several years back and that does me fine (and yes, I even had to get heatsinks and a fan for the Pi 4 with the money I saved because that runs too hot as well!). I think the Pi 3B is the last Pi you can sensibly run 24x7 without extra cooling or high power consumption.

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Weirdly, the 6 DLCs for Space Wolf don't include the Exceptional Card Pack DLC, but since the Humble purchase only cost me 80p, I tracked down the DLC at Fanatical for 59p (well, 56p with a 5% off coupon) at https://www.fanatical.com/en/dlc/warhammer-40-000-space-wolf-exceptional-card-pack [External Link] and bought that as well.

Equally weirdly, the special edition of Space Wolf at Fanatical - see https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/warhammer-40-000-space-wolf-special-edition [External Link] - is down to a mere £1, but only comes with 4 DLCs (one of which is, yep, the Exceptional Card Pack). It's really swings and roundabouts as to which set you buy, but there's less than 2 weeks left to do so in either case...

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It's nice to see a first tier on a Humble Bundle that's actually dirt cheap for a change (80p for 4 games!). That hasn't happened in a long time, so I've been skipping about the last dozen or so bundles until now. Just played a bit of Lost Planet 3 on my Deck (played fine on mostly medium and 60 FPS) and it's not a great game, but for 20p (was £40 on launch 10 years ago!), it's amazing value.

Note that Bionic Commando: Rearmed will need some Protontricks PhysX love to get it to work on the Deck - look it up on protondb.com for more info.

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Quoting: elmapulbut maybe they barely can produce enough units to meet the current demand, so there is no point in increasing the demand with marketing?

The recent Steam Sale that had 10% off the Deck caused a big run on the UK 64GB model, so much so that it not only went out of stock in the final few days of the sale, but it has remained out of stock ever since then! So, yes, it does look like - for that model in the UK at least - they aren't making enough Decks to meet demand...

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