I spent all last night working on setting up Pop!OS on the Pi, and finally got it where I can get most of my work done. It was slow going, but I expect that. The entire experience is rather slow compared to even my old laptop from 2013. Had I gone into this expecting the same level of performance, I'd have been very frustrated. Instead, I accepted a slower pace and just came up with ways to deal with it. One of them is installing Mahjong from the PopShop so I have something to play while I wit for things or just sit idle. It's one of my favorite puzzle games and the only one I really play anymore. When system updates are running and slowing down we browsing, I start that up and play a round. Perfectly fine.

I had to order some canvas wax online this morning, something I normally do from my Android phone, and decided to do it on the Pi. No problems there. So far I know I can watch my movies and TV collection on here, browse online, order stuff, play some simple games, listen to music, read and research, and write up my logs on here. If I have the time and energy today, I'll try out the Arduino IDE with my Arduino Mega and Raspberry Pi Pico. I still have to sort out GPIO on here as well.

Pop is really for my daily use, not project use. I will be using Raspberry Pi OS for most of my development as that's the target OS for my main project. I plan to do video editing and conversion, audio editing, photo editing, and pretty much anything else I need to do. I am learning video production on the side and would love to be able to produce good videos from a Pi like this. I know this is not a great system for such things, but I can let rendering run overnight. The Pi sits idle while I sleep, and it's low power consumption means I can let it run on battery power when I hit the road on a motorcycle. I can edit the video, hit render, then put it in a ventilated bag and let it run off the motorcycle battery and alternator while I ride. I wouldn't do that with a normal laptop. It's slow, but I am patient.

I really just want to show what's possible. This is my favorite computer so far and it deserves more than just web browsing. When GPU hardware acceleration is sorted out on the Pi 400, I suspect the entire experience will improve greatly. Until then, I'll just work on adding active cooling to the system and overclock it. I found plenty of vents in the bottom of the Pidock 400, so I'll be adding a fan soon. Until then, it shall remain at the stock clock speeds.

I do plan on getting a secondary PC for more serious stuff like proper fast video editing and 4K editing. I'm considering the Minisforum Elite HX90. I prefer AMD these days, and the APU packs some serious power. The power to power consumption ratio is quite good as well. I can use the Pidock 400 as a monitor for it, and the Pi 400 as a keyboard and mouse over USB C using some clever code. I have tons of old media backups that I'd like to convert and compress, but I don't feel like asking my Pi or old laptop to convert 5TB to H265. They might die... That PC should have little trouble plowing through such tasks. I also wish to play games as I travel, so i Could use that as a Steam server and the Pi as a client. I'll be testing that setup when I can.

Overall, I am quite pleased. I know the Pi can run far better at 2.3GHz, but it runs far too hot in the Pidock. Until I sort out cooling, I shall chug along slow and steady.