First of all, what is a DevTerm? Well, the official explanation on the Clockwork website reads as follows:
DevTerm is Lifestyle
DevTerm is a post-modern, digital minimalist lifestyle.
The A5 notebook size integrates complete PC functions with a retro-futurism design, a 6.8-inch ultra-wide screen, classic QWERTY keyboard, necessary interfaces, high-speed wireless, long battery life, and even includes a practical thermal printer.
No matter where you are, DevTerm brings you a focused and immersive experience, provides you with an “anywhere door” escape for distraction-free typing and deep thinking.
“Distraction-free typing and deep thinking”. That’s interesting. That sounds familiar. Like the Freewrite then? Well, yes, and no. I mean, definitely yes, in as much as the DevTerm can be used as a portable, self-contained word processing device, but also no, because, although its size is minimal, it is very much a maximalist device. But I’m getting way ahead of myself here, so let’s start at the beginning. The very beginning.
Back in 1983 Japanese ceramic and electronics manufacturer, the Kyocera Corporation, produced a portable computer which they called the Kyotronic 85. It didn’t sell particularly well in Japan, but US company Tandy bought the rights to produce their own version – the TRS-80 Model 100 – which were sold in Radio Shack stores across the USA and Canada. The TRS-80 Model 100 was one of the very first notebook-style portable computers. Roughly the size of a book with a built-in keyboard and LCD screen, the Model 100 ran on batteries, making it a truly portable computer. Four decades later, the DevTerm‘s own look and form is based on the TRS-80 Model 100, making it a kind of unofficial 21st-century successor of that much-beloved machine.
Unlike its 80s predecessor, the DevTerm comes in kit form. Clockwork were kind enough to send me one of their A06 models to build and try out. As you can see from the video posted above, putting the DevTerm together was a pretty quick and easy task. It probably took me the best part of an afternoon – maybe three hours, maximum.
The DevTerm comes without batteries and requires rechargeable 18650s (which, I believe, are the kind used in a lot of Vapes, besides other things). So, I had to order those separately. After a fair bit of Googling and searching on forum.clockworkpi.com, I went for Molicel Battery P26A Rechargeable Batteries INR 2600mAh. To be 100% honest, I’m not positive that was the best choice, but I’ll get to that later.
The DevTerm charges via USB type C. It has three standard USB ports, a Micro HDMI out, and a 2.5 mm audio output/headphone jack output (it has its own tiny speakers, which are surprisingly loud and clear). If you wanted to, you could plug in a USB mouse, a USB keyboard, and output to a screen to use the DevTerm as a fully functioning mini PC. It also has Bluetooth, so connecting a mouse and keyboard that way is also an option (and is easy to do). The DevTerm kit comes with a 16GB micro SD card, which has your OS pre-installed on it. Oh, it also has an expansion port which comes with a thermal printer! I haven’t tried that out yet though.
DevTerm is short for Developer Terminal, and the device is aimed at the coding community – for people who know their Python from their Golang, and their Rust from their Lua. Sadly, I do not know any of those things. So, how is a Windows PC user such as myself going to fare when faced with a device running a custom Linux operating system (ClockworkOS)? Well, on a very basic level, it’s a lot easier than I feared it might be.
When you power on the DevTerm you get a very simple, friendly desktop (again, as you can see from the video above). Point your cursor at Applications in the top left of the screen and you get a dropdown menu. From here you can update and install software including LibreOffice (which is my go-to day-to-day writing/working software) and Thunderbird (my preferred Email application). With the ability to open, create, edit, and save documents, and send and receive emails, that is pretty much me done. Those two things mean that, with a WiFi connection, the DevTerm is a fully functioning mini office for me, straight away. Also, of course, I can browse the internet, meaning I can research anything I need to online.
While it won’t quite fit in your pocket, the DevTerm is surprisingly small (in a good way). Roughly 6 inches by 8 inches, and a little over an inch in depth a the back end. Despite this, it has a fully functioning mini keyboard with a mini trackball, mouse buttons, four Gamepad buttons (X Y A B), and Gamepad arrow keys. I was expecting the keyboard to be really difficult to work with, but actually, it didn’t take long to get used to typing on. Obviously, being able to plug in or wirelessly connect your portable keyboard of choice means you don’t have to type directly on the tiny keys, but it is completely possible to do so, and it feels surprisingly good.
I’m well aware that what I’m doing with the DevTerm is a bit like using a top of the range gaming PC to play Minesweeper – I’m not using the device to anything like its full potential. However, that’s also true of my desktop PC, laptop, etc, etc. There are literally endless possibilities with all of these devices, but I’m excited to use them for “just” typing, emailing, and researching? Well, yeah, that’s what I do for a living, and that’s what I’m interested in. So, I know I’m not exploring the full potential of the DevTerm here, but what I am doing is seeing if it works for me, and for the way I work. So does it?
When I said that having LibreOffice, Thunderbird, and internet browsing were all that I needed, I perhaps wasn’t being entirely truthful. To make the DevTerm perfect as a mobile office option, I would also need to be able to save and download my work to/from cloud storage. Dropbox is what Leah and I use day-to-day, and we’ve done so for years and years now. Yes, I can access my Dropbox via the browser and log in that way, but can I install the Dropbox app on the DevTerm? Well, the short answer is no. I can’t. Which is not to say that it isn’t possible. I’m almost positive that it is, but I don’t understand how to do it, simply because I have no idea how to install Dropbox on a Linux device. I’m used to autorunning Windows installers, I’m afraid. Download and click Yes. While the DevTerm is set up from first power on to make it easy to install applications such as LibreOffice, those shortcuts aren’t in place for Dropbox. So, I need to do some further work and research on that. Purely my own shortcomings, I’m sure.
As I said above, I’m not positive that I picked the right batteries for the job. Plugged into a USB power source the DevTerm runs perfectly and the batteries charge fine. Once I’m fully charged and running on battery power alone, however, I have a problem. Like most devices, when the DevTerm is left inactive for a time, the screen will go blank and it will go to sleep. The problem I’ve had a few times now is that when I try to wake the DevTerm back up again it seems to have shut down altogether. I’m thinking this might be a battery issue because, when it happens, the batteries seem to drain quite dramatically. Maybe the ones I picked aren’t so great at supplying the lower voltages that the DevTerm uses when sleeping? I’m not sure, but I’m definitely going to do a bit more research and see if I can pick up some better, different, batteries, more suited to the job.
Those issues aside then, and bearing in mind that they are both almost certainly my own fault, rather than actual problems with the device itself, how does the DevTerm compare with something like the Freewrite? Well, if you’ve read my account of the three hectic weeks I spent with the Freewrite back in December 2020, you’ll know that I had a few issues with its limitations.
The Freewrite writes in plain text only, has no cursor control, and has no ability to “drop in” at any point in a document to add or change anything. The only way to edit text is to physically delete the last thing you typed and then retype it. Spotted a typo a paragraph back? You will need to delete that entire paragraph and retype it to correct it. Which, to me, seems just silly, and completely counterproductive. I believe that the Freewrite Traveler does have cursor control, so maybe that’s something they’re thinking of rolling out to the big Freewrite in the future. I hope so because that was a big issue for me. Obviously, formatting and editing are not a problem at all on the DevTerm, because you’re just using standard word processing software and saving as .doc or .docx or whatever format you like.
Likewise, my issue with the Freewrite not being able to import documents in any form (at all, which just seems crazy) is completely done away with by virtue of the fact that the DevTerm is a fully functioning mini pc with no such arbitrary limitations.
What the Freewrite did have going for it was it’s automatically saving all your work to a cloud backup (and yes, you could use Dropbox). As I’ve said though, I’m confident that I will be able to get the DevTerm to backup to cloud storage once I’ve done some more research (and probably asked someone to help me, if I’m completely honest). The Freewrite also has a really, really beautiful (full size) mechanical keyboard, which was an absolute pleasure to type on and, whichever way you slice it, the same can’t be said for the DevTerm. Although, of course, you could use any keyboard you liked with the DevTerm, even a TEX Shinobi…
Is the DevTerm really a “distraction free” device though? Isn’t it just as likely that you’ll get stuck browsing, or checking Twitter, or whatever, as you would if you were working on a laptop or iPad? Not with a 6.8 inch, non-touchscreen, screen, no. I don’t think so. Don’t get me wrong, the screen is fantastic and everything on it looks great; you can happily sit and watch YouTube or whatever on it. However, I think it’s definitely less conducive to the kind of idle, distracting, zombie-like internet noodling so many of us are guilty of. Also, there’s something very, very aesthetically pleasing about filling that screen with a document. Do that, and the DevTerm instantly looks and feels like a designated wordprocessor in exactly the same way the Freewrite does. It’s just that it can still do a whole lot more. I mean, a ridiculous amount more.
The DevTerm A06 series kit is available to order now from Clockwork for $339.00 USD