GPD MicroPC looks tempting indeed...
1) Why only one touch-pad? What will left-handed people do?
2) HDMI details: is it in, out or either way? Is it possible to use one of the USB ports (full-size or USB-C) as a second video-port (for those people who want to attach VR/AR headset to HDMI port, and yet be able to output the image from screen to the projector)? And I personally dislike HDMI - prefer old-fashioned ports, such as VGA and others.
3) active cooling design is not a plus in my book. Imagine standing in desert, with ambient air temperature of 50°C, and insolation over 1kW/m². With computer running something heavy, would it overheat to extent of burning human's hands and melting plastic enclosure?

Thank you. Best wishes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Per aspera ad astra...

I guess the answer is obvious:
There's not enough space for a 2nd touchpad on the left side. And even if there were, one of the two touchpads would have always been useless.

That being said, I get your point. Maybe it would have been clever to have a modular design in that part, which allows you to swap the touchpad and the number keys around.
This however would have required to split the keyboard and would have made also the internal design more complicated. Also one would need at least a 3rd module for the mouse buttons.
The easier approach to address left-handers would have been a trackpoint instead of a touchpad.

The button in the middle right below the display hinge is a fan switch, so you can decide whether you want the device to run passively or not. I think that's the best option, because in other situations you'd want a fan to dissipate the heat and increase the computing power.

Besides, If you place a dark laptop in the blazing sun, so it really heats up, you won't be able to touch it with your bare hands long before the plastic melts. Plastic may deform before that point though (X220/230 anyone?).
That's why I generally think, bright colors (white, silver, light gray) are more reasonable.

Another mainline Linux device in the works...

Golden Delicious/hns is making a GTA15/PyraPhone, a phone variant of the DragonBox Pyra:

http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail...ry/001935.html

Out of the various open, mainline Linux phones in development, it looks like PinePhone might be the first to market:

https://baldnerd.com/pine64-has-near...ephone-design/

AND, it's as cheap as chips!

Mechanical switches! Nice! I designed a phone with them and sent it to Nokia just before they crashed. But my phone design was not a smartphone. Still trying to make it happen one day.

Indeed. My first smartphone, Palm Treo 600, had a mechanical ringer switch. Slide left, ring. Slide right, vibrate only. I find living without it very hard.

dated Tue Jan 1 13:49:11 CET 2019

reads well here (old news),
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=7093
but their focus looks promising

GDP MicroPC comes with 6GB RAM now, with an added price of $15.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/g...p#/updates/all

I was already buying it, but this is still excellent news!

GDP MicroPC now comes with 8gb of ram. The campaign is over now, though, but it's still available, altough at a slightly higher price.

Anyways, this computer is shaping up to be a decent-specced machine with Linux available to it! And the size makes it highly portable, and that has some good usecases in certain situations...