Ask Paul: March 26 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and welcome to the end of the month. Spring is in full bloom here after a horrible winter, so let’s kick off the final weekend of March a bit early...
Taking requests
JF-NYC asks:

Can you ask for a review unit of the Newline Flex 27 monitor? It seems like the perfect solution for docking a windows laptop (4K 27” external touchscreen display). I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Perhaps. I don’t typically review this kind of thing, but I do have a set of portable external displays I’m overdue in writing about. Let me get through that first and I’ll see if this makes sense.
Going to war over Star Wars
bschnatt asks:

So... your opinion on the meddling of George Lucas? Do you prefer classic Star Wars, or the "improved" version? Personally, I despise the man for ruining part of my childhood...

I’m kind of in the middle on this one. Some of the additions/changes he’s made to the original trilogy are fine, but some are ghastly and unnecessary. I also seem to recall that the way this started was with the transition from VHS to newer formats (LaserDisc and then DVD) where you could see the outlines around each of the spaceships as they were flying around because they were originally matted together using traditional photography and not digital effects. And then there was the effort to clean up the noise and damage in the original prints. But you can kind of see where that escalated into “I wonder what else I could change?” and it kind of went overboard.

Here's what would make this 100 percent OK in my book: Lucasfilm should simply make the original versions of each film available alongside the changed versions. That way fans could watch the versions they preferred. I know Lucas was against doing this, but Lucas doesn’t own Star Wars anymore, so I assume Disney could make this happen.

I would love to watch the original versions of Star Wars (Episode 4), especially, as this was the first movie I saw multiple times in the theater.
Mini portable PCs
matsan asks:

Question that pops into my mind after posting to the Forum about my favorite XP computer (the OQO e2). Will we ever see a computer like that again? It was amazing - 3G connection, running full Windows XP, connected with monitors using HDMI (albeit with a quirky dongle). As a network technician it was amazing to have when connecting to network switches using serial ports or web-browser.

I feel like this kind of thing does still exist, but it’s not exactly a mainstream product for individuals. And I do remember playing around with one at a Showstoppers (or similar) at CES (most likely) and thinking it was an interesting idea. A semi-recent example of this sort of thing---minus the built-in display and keyboard---was the Kangaroo line of PCs, and at the end of that run, there was even a laptop solution. But that was five years ago now.

But in 2021 and beyond, any device you can carry in your pocket and then dock at home and at work...