it’s a recording of a live talk they did durring a monthly meetup. first one in this format and first recorded. so best guess is no one thought to have a mic for the q&a. theres also a priority to respect anonymity in mspmesh so i suppose rhe editor could have cut the questioners voice out for that.

i agree the q&a transitions were awkward though. it sounds like the group wants to do more sessions like this to dive deeper. i’ll pass the q&a feedback to them.

they are a great example of over engineering just to over engineer. lots of neat ideas that dont serve a purpose in the end. the only personal complaint i have is i dont like the trackpad. they tried to look like an apple trackpad but the button resistance wasnt considered. so its uncomforable to me with extended use. ive also had to replace two dead trackpads.

battery life is average. screen is flimsy but looks nice. lots of things are ok, not bad, just ok. without the hype of being repairable its just another macbook air clone you’d only buy after it goes on sale. if they’d allowed the design to be a little bulkier and used stronger parts instead of gimmicks, it could have been something worth its price.

i do like the aspect ratio and keyboard. the magnetic bezel is a great fidget. getting it without ram and ssd was nice. didnt have to toss the preinstalled ones when i put in 32gb and a 4tb ssd. but its not a ‘great’ laptop its just a laptop.

their lack of response to all this was emphasised by leaving all the racist and terfy comments up on the community forums for days. it was like browsing twitter.

they’re fine. im not throwing out my first get 13" but im also not upgrading it. i’ll use it till it dies and replace it like any other laptop*. it turned out to be a perfectly fine device. i knew going in i was spending extra for the chance it’d be my “last laptop” that’d be periodically upgraded. it’s definitely fallen short in daily use. decent enough computer that i dont regret having tried it. but i’d stopped suggesting framework to people long before we found out they’re a bunch of assholes.

meahtastic has a local groups section. your area may have one thats not in that list, most of the big US meshes arent. if you’re in the US chicago, austin, msp and san fran all seem to have active communities of varying sizes. those websites and discord/signals/whatever will have great resources for meshing in your area. a node for someplace like austin isnt going to have the same design concerns as say minneapolis or toronto.

in the US at least its about broadcast power level. HAMs can broadcast louder but cant enable encryption. default firmware shipped to the US limits your power level so you remain legal.

*i should add that is MY understanding of the situation and i’m no lawyer.

this is never going to be and was not designed to be a secret spy movie text network anymore than it is an instant messager replacement. the encryption has a ways to go yes but its also come a long way. the benefit of the platform is zero licensing entry with cheap gear. that communities can stand up together and use. or organizers can flash devices between uses and swarm a mesh if needed.

its fun building meshes that can cover a hundred miles but, to function like that you have to drastically shorten the messages. and repeat messages to deal with drops. the encryption overall is fine for what the mesh can do and what the appropriate use cases could be. not great but it’ll do.

for the handheld portables like a tdeck stick to flexible whips. it’s lesson you want to learn before breaking your first tdeck.

generally though these pocket devices are not stand alone solutions. they become useful in an established mesh network. If your area doesn’t have an existing community for this stuff, you dont travel to places with established meshes or you’re just getting started. plan on picking up at least one other small device. a heltec or rak with decent antenna would let you place it at a high point and experiment with what kind of range the tdeck gets.

i’ve settled on the wisblock starter if im putting something together for a beginner. theres some nice already assembled kits available as well. as has been mentioned already here the antenna is where you find success. and the RAK4631 on the starter makes is easy to add a better external antenna for both lora and bluetooth. which means it can be placed at a high point and potentially still connected to throughout a house or appartment. its also a really nice platform to build off of if you get into it.

the new firmware does a better job of generating keys, and now waits until after the radio region is set by a user. wiping and reflashing recreates the keys it got when a vender bulk flashed devices.

update the firmware to 2.6.11 by doing a wipe/update.