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Comment by llimllib | Hacker News Reader

> We make no profit from selling these units. If you think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel, will prompt you to file a PayPal dispute then please do not purchase the Pinebook Pro. Thank you.

This just sounds unsustainable

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You stripped the first part of that paragraph: “ When fulfilling the purchase, please bear in mind that we are offering the Pinebook Pro at this price as a community service to PINE64, Linux and BSD communities. We make no profit from selling these units...”

While that doesn’t state anything definitively, it sounds like they plan to either increase prices later on, or that the first batch (of PRE-orders keep in mind) is being released early in order to get feedback from customers.

In either case it doesn’t sound like they’re planning to operate as a charity forever.

I think you're reading more into it than what is there, but I hope that's the case! Seems like a neat product and I hope they sell it at a sustainable price rather than stay at the bottom and get sunk when people file chargebacks.

The Pro is a follow up to the 99$ pinebook, and they have been selling that at the same price for years.

I don't know if they make any money at $99, but holding price steady can increase margin over time if the underlying costs go down over time.

They reinvest the cash right back into development and production units. There is risk that this company will evaporate, however: https://www.pine64.org/philosophy/

None of us is as smart as all of us ~ Ken H. Blanchard At the core of our philosophy is the notion that PINE64 is a community platform. [...] The goal is to deliver ARM64 devices that you really wish to engage with and a platform that you want to be a part of.

As such, if you can help them source better quality IPS panels, I know a guy you should talk to.

it sounds like a neat product, I'm just wishing they would charge more to cover the risk/rate of chargebacks rather than simply ask people not to sink them.

Yes of course, it would be nice if a bad batch didn't slow future development to a crawl. Pine64 works in batches, they don't ship promptly, they are also heavily preorder based for in-development projects, and they directly work with developers, as the people who buy them are also the developers of the software which runs on them.

If you get a dead pixel, they will sell you another panel. The laptops are modular, check out how they handled the NVME adapter problems: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8117

I feel quite confident after seeing their work.

Charging more would make this laptop less accessible to the vast majority of people. The Novena, Talos & many other libre hardware projects were always so expensive as to be botique afterthoughts, rather than "I can spend $100 and get a nice netbook".

Well, personally I would prefer them to make profit. I would be willing to pay a bit more since the product seems quite interesting - not actually in the current state, but what the product could be if the business actually flourishes.

Better would be something like "Disclaimer: the product can have up to 10 dead pixels which are not covered by warranty."

me too! that's exactly what I'm suggesting, that they should charge more to cover the %age of jerks that will file paypal chargebacks rather than ask people to be kind

I hear what you're saying, but to be clear, Pine Microsystems is not operating a pizza shop. It is much more like a hackerspace or community workshop then a merchant. They offer a direct-from-manufacturer business model, where a non-membership based community of interested stakeholders directly contribute to most if not all of the products. Check out the engineering blog posts.

If you are looking for a turnkey solution, not all of Pine64's offerings are able meet your needs (but do snag a $1.99 CH340 Serial console.) and if you preorder the "Braveheart" phone, there is no stable off the shelf OS prepared for it. You cannot buy this and mail it to ahead your hotel and give a demonstration to the board by next Thursday.

That said, and I don't think this is superlative at all, Pine64's efforts currently exemplify the internet dream of a "Global Village" economy.

Right there on the pinebook order page:

> Small numbers (1-3) of stuck or dead pixels are a characteristic of LCD screens. These are normal and should not be considered a defect.

And:

> [...] make no profit from selling these units. If you think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel, will prompt you to file a PayPal dispute then please do not purchase the Pinebook. Thank you.

This kind of stuff is frustrating to me.

Projects that respect their customers are usually on the edge of oblivion because they don't have a profit or ownership motive. But they are vulnerable to others copying and cost-reducing their work. Customers usually choose the cheaper copy.

Projects that are sucessful assure themselves a profit by closing their products and restricting things. Customers are limited in what they can do, or have to be content with buying a crippled product.

sigh.

Works well so far. Computers are still laughably overpriced overall.

The problem is that without making a profit, you have no buffer to handle unforseen risk.

That isn't what profit means. Savings you are holding for a rainy day are not profit.

The simplest definition of profit seems to imply that someone paid more for something than was put into it. How does one get savings with no profit?

edit: I'm trying to ask a question; and I should add, it is my understanding that's how profit is defined. Why would this be downvoted? Do I really have to paste a definition of profit in here?

Except accounting-wise, and tax-wise, that is what profit means. Retaining a surplus into future periods is generally going to be a taxable event.

I suppose you could create a reserve against projected liabilities such as warranty returns (which is commonly done in for-profit companies). But that is pretty well explicitly not for a rainy day or the unexpected; it’s for the rather firmly expected.

Not if you’re Apple and you hide it overseas. Seems a lot like this situation

Retained earnings are non-taxable as long as they relate to a legitimate business need.

Probably meant: business should make profit, from that profit the business can save some money for the rainy day. And I agree.

However I don't know who are behind PINE64 - maybe they have some long-term investor backing them up, and they try price at this point as low as possible to get the community going.

Actually, I would be interested in investing to this pine thing.

That's why they sell at short separated periods.

You should have seen what they cost three decades ago.

They need to charge slightly more then. Having enough profits to ensure financial security for the organization is not unethical

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