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> I don't know how you can sustainably make a laptop and sell it for $100. I'm selling the first developer models for EUR 549/599 and I'm not making any profit on these, it's basically passing on the material cost. I guess it's a tradeoff between cutting enough corners to bring the price down and trying to achieve some base of quality and durability. These are different goals.

I don't completely understand your goal. If the case has been designed to be able to sensibly 3d print replacement parts, why are you spending so much making the thing high-quality and durable in the first place?

After almost a year the Pinebook I bought doesn't have any broken parts at all. Additionally, that FF update that brought multi-threaded page loading was essentially equivalent to upgrading the CPU. (The people I bought it for use it mainly to browse.)

Are these things good enough that you could buy one and say stick it in the laundry room (or wherever) with a web browser on it and make actual use of it? Like a laptop in every room?

Chromebook would better for that use case I think. Since it’s entirely managed and simply runs a browser.

> I don't know how you can sustainably make a laptop and sell it for $100

I assume that this product was able to source laptop parts from a factory that already had production set up for generic android notebooks or something like that, which would help keeping the prices down.

It even has Cherry ML keys! That's pretty cool.

I also like how you avoid the whole Wi-Fi/OSS mess by just offering a mPCI slot so people can add proprietary hardware if they chose.

> I don't know how you can sustainably make a laptop and sell it for $100.

I wondered about that and then saw it only has 2GB RAM and a 16GB Flash drive.

They're a bit out of my price range for the moment

I just wanted to say though. I absolutely love the hacker aesthetic those laptops have going on

I love the keyboard, reminds me of my old compaq beige brick laptop. What does it actually feel like to type on though? They actual keys look kinda squidgy but that may just be their translucent appearance.

It feels good. The squishy look is irregularities of the resin printing process for the keycaps. We are working on solving this so that all keycaps are exactly equal.

This keyboard is better than all the chiclet island crap.

What's the graphics driver situation like on i.MX6? Is Etnaviv decent?

Neat project! I'm interested in the 1.2GHz version, but is there any reasonable way to have some guarantee that I will get it? I understand that things can get pushed back with projects like this, so delays aren't my concern, just actual follow-through.

Well, I can only promise you that I will deliver. We shipped around 400 VA2000s&CXs out of my house. Smaller scope, but I’m used to ship.

Edit: I already purchased some critical parts (all SoC modules, 100x hinges, 2000 keyswitches, fans, optical sensors), and I have suppliers for the screen and batteries.

Fair enough. I looked a bit more around your website. Hopefully there will be one more preorder available in the morning.

Best of luck with the project regardless.

I just preordered one. Please don't disappoint me :)

> I could not find the design files for Pinebook so I'm not sure what is "Open Source" about it? Schematics are not sources.

That might be what you were looking for : https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=5734

No it is not, or I’m too ignorant to find it. Where are the PCB design files?

This looks like a great project. Great work!

I'm curious, what sort of battery life are you getting out of the setups that are currently available for pre-order?

im a huge fan of your work. may i ask if a IMX8M version will be available in the future ?

Hi, thanks! Not to trigger the Osborne effect, but yes, this is a plan. And/or RISC-V. But we need to get the ball rolling. I will give a discount or upgrade option for people who get the i.MX6 version now.

RISC-V would be great, but I understand this is going to be far off at the moment in terms of viability, here's me hoping single digit years before RISC-V appears in a laptop though.

We were dealing with Freescale for iMX6s when the NXP buyout happened, and the transition was day and night. They cut all sorts of support right out from under us.

Did you see anything similar?

Wow, this looks and sounds great.