Pinebook Pro, First Impressions
bentsukun.ch
bentsukun.ch
There's also apparently a bounty: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/88375235-reverse-enginee...
If there is a firmware solution, then I think I'll have no complaints left for the pinebook pro :)
Once I turned off the "click in this area for button x" stuff and turned on tap to click, it became 10x more usable.
(I'm not familiar with the pinebook trackpad, so it could be more that just configuration)
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[1] Or even real buttons!
The application for those resolutions in mobile chips is to take a picture from the hardware video decoder and display it.
When did 1080 become regarded as acceptable, let alone decent? I remember running CRTs as high as 1440 about 20 years ago. What happened? Why hasn't resolution doubled a few times since then?
My phone has around 550 PPI but my computer monitor at 160 PPI looks damn near as sharp. Meanwhile I can clearly notice when the phone's resolution is reduced to get around 400 PPI, but I highly doubt I would be able to tell the difference between 200 and 250 on a computer monitor.
And I’m not sure what you mean about settings. I’ve never seen a modern app not scale correctly, and in the worst case very old ones draw their interfaces at a lower resolution but the same size as other apps... which is no worse than what you’d get with a lower resolution screen.
I work with text primarily and I find old low resolution screens painfully blurry for this.
The only reason they’re not in my daily driver laptop is that I can’t get one with a decent display and a power efficient CPU.
There’s surely pent up demand for such machines. Hopefully someone will build one eventually.
In Linux, everything works out of the box.
What fascinates me about Pine64 is that we might finally see Linux on phones and tablets.
I ordered a PinePhone a few days ago. Can't wait to try it. I wonder when they will ship it. I got an email "Your order has been received and is now being processed." but no info when they will send it out. Any idea how fast they will ship?
- It's fairly inexpensive, even when compared to cheaper build machines.
- It's very open and easy to hack
- It's fast to the point of being actually useful
- It has a six-core asymmetric CPU (two fast A72 cores, 4 low-power A53 ones). That's not available on any x86 based laptop.
- It's almost completely Windows-proof.
What does this mean? And why is that good?
Not that they couldn't, just they couldn't beat ARM. And ARM already had a solid footing in the dumb phone space.
I think four things. Two Technical and two business. 0x86's innate power consumption per bit of state change is higher than ARM's. Lack of experience with low power process. No one wants to pay the Intel Tax. And Intel isn't very nice to their customers.
Also, remember that Intel doesn't have asymmetric multi-core parts right now, but they already announced Lakefield, which has Tremont and Sunny Cove cores on a single package.
In a sense, it's like playing with Intel's future chip, but with an ARM ISA.
This means that the average person can design a computer around the processor without paying a couple million to intel in NDA agreements.
This is a being deal for the FOSS hardware community - I myself am actually working on a project to make an open processor with a GPU. https://systemeslibres.org
The main thing I see is that it enabled a $200 laptop which is amazing (except for the dodgy keyboard and trackpad undermining it)
Being able to get to the core of the system matters very much to him - being able to trust his hardware. Releasing MOBO files strengthens that trust. In addition, he can repair the MOBO himself if need be.
I suppose me and my friend represent a minority of users though.
I'm not quite sure that's the case...
I get what you mean, but to be clear -- this is not a computer for the average person (nor is it meant to be).
This is sad, because they were easy-to-buy and inexpensive Linux machines. Pixelbook Go is very nice, and the price is reasonable.
Shipping schedules for Pinebook Pro and Pinephone do fluctuate since they are produced and shipped in batches.
So it makes sense to use Linux if that's what you prioritize.
I use this laptop mostly to work outdoors. I get somewhere nice, surrounded by nature, open the laptop, plug in my 4G modem and work from there. It gets me about 6h of real usage, but sometimes I can't charge it up to 100%. I'd also like to have a brighter scree so I deal better with sunlight.
Most of the times I go to places you can't reach by car, so I go on bike or walking, therefore I need to be careful with what I carry with me, be it weight or volume.
An ARM laptop would be a nice upgrade for my battery anxiety, but having everything soldered makes me uneasy, and 64 Gb HD + 4Gb Ram is not enough for me. Also, I wasn't able to find info about the screen brightness.
Would pay more for 4K, smaller bezels and faster CPU/more dram, but only if it remained fanless, and kept the 8 hour battery life.
(I paid $189.)
if it was after that date, you'll have to wait for the next batch - no idea when that is scheduled.
- It's an open device so you're not locked out of or into anything (Android devices don't cut it on this front)
- It's ARM-based
One thing they haven't:
- You don't pay for a Windows license you'll never use
That last thing has annoyed some of us for decades: funding (even in a minor way) a company that has been actively hostile to the platform we want to use. Plus it adds some amount of cost to the device. Believe what you will about their recent change of stance, some of us still don't want to send money their way unnecessarily.
I think most people interested in a device like this would be better served with a Chromebook, of which there are numerous, with much more diverse hardware options. They already run Coreboot and are about the most open laptop devices currently sold in large quantities.
The one thing that I think is much worse than it should be is the trackpad and my view is much more negative than in this review. For me, it's terrible and often borders on unusable for anything that doesn't have a large clickable area. It is such a contrast to the keyboard that is much better than I expected and probably the best laptop keyboard I've used in a long time.
Maybe a typo? Should be around 157dpi for a 14 inch screen. Though I absolutely agree with the general idea, high dpi screens (over 200 dpi) do make the experience much much better.
After some experimentation and someone on the forums pointing me to https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebook_Pro#X-Windows_.26... I am getting decent performance.
What's wrong with this?
The article says the device also support some charging over USB-C... why even bother including a barrel-connector? It feels wrong.
It does mean it has an extra port that you might find unnecessary, but at the kind of prices they're selling this at including a usb-c charger would actually add a fair bit to their costs, and you can buy an aftermarket one pretty easily.
No one seems to complain about their 120/240 mains plugs not being "modern" either...
Those plugs are standardized. I can use them with a Dell laptop, an Apple desktop, and a VIC-20 from 1982, with zero difficulty. If there were exactly one barrel plug (per country) that worked on everything, you'd see a lot less interest in ditching it.
Try one of the hundreds USB-C hubs to see for yourself that they regularly ship USB-C ports that can only be used for charging, and not data.
The actual number of USB data ports is not related to what is used for charging, except maybe on some space-constrained devices.
Are they standardised? Can I use a Dell barrel charger on an HP?
Wikipedia says it's a mess and people aren't following any standards, with the same physical connector having different voltages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_power_connector#Standa....
You need a Dell charger for a Dell laptop. We call this 'proprietary'.
You can, if they didn't add any additional DRM on top of it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23304194 ) and the polarity is correct (center-positive is most common.)
The voltage is basically irrelevant --- 18-20V is going to be 90% of all laptops, and the other range is 10-12V.
Right - this is what we mean by proprietary.
Barrel connectors are not proprietary just because someone implemented theirs in some specific way to harm consumers.
In fact USB-C connectors are more likely to implement a DRM, given that the connector comes 'batteries-included' with a data channel that won't need to be re-imagined.
Barrel jacks offer no such boot-straps to would-be DRMers. That isn't to say it's impossible (as HP/Dell/Fujitsu have proven), but a 2 prong barrel jack is going to require a bit more effort.
If you are using proprietary to mean 'consumer-hostile', use a better phrase. Proprietary has specific context to IP/copyright/design.
I'm not - I'm using it to mean non-standard and specific to an individual vendor. I can use my Apple USB-C charger to charge anything accepting USB-C, which is most things these days. I can't use my Dell laptop charger to charge anything except a Dell laptop. That's what I mean by proprietary.
And yet I know of exactly zero instances of this happening, probably because it'd be exceptionally silly to do.
The dimensions you use and the voltage you put across it and polarity you use all make the jacks incompatible. You have to use a Dell charger for a Dell laptop.
- the voltage they apply
- how much power they can deliver
- the dimensions of the barrel connector
- the polarity of the connector
- handshake protocols (DRM)
You can find laptop chargers with any one of hundreds of possible combinations of these. Each one may be individually standardised, but the charger is not. That's what makes them proprietary.
Compare this to manufacturers with some sense, like Apple, that use a standard USB connector for power. That's so much simpler and user-friendly.
Their commoditized nature means people are making smaller and lighter adapters.
Depending on the wattage you can use the same USB-C adapter for multiple devices.
There are many USB-C external batteries available.
Here's some comments I made a few years ago explaining why that voltage:
There are tons of wall warts with barrel jack outputs that are the exact same case size and cable length. A quick search of digikey will confirm that. That's a big part of their flexibility - you can easily get an AC/DC converter spec'd for slightly more power in just about the exact same form factor. If you need a little more power, buy a wall wart with slightly higher rated amperage.
I would also suggest that the Pinebook volumes are nowhere near the scale where they can harness USB-C benefits. They're a small company, not an Apple.
Conversely, I can walk around my apartment and charger my thinkpad from any of about 20 different USBC supplies. I can charge my phone in the car, or my laptop from the USBC output. There's a swathe of batteries on the mantle, all of which can charge my phone or my laptop for days or a week depending which size I pick up.
USB-C seems superior because it comes with a data link, and negotiates higher power ratings.
The tradeoff is that this comes with complexity. The Pinebook team, sensibly, decided they didn't want to fuck with building and verifying USB-C power negotiation subsystems.
Guarantee that everyone complaining about it here has never had to implement, or be accountable for the BOM cost of, a USB-C power negotiation system.
Actually they did, as you can read in the OP or at https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/
Granted I haven’t ever had to implement it, but I think you’re underselling its benefits.
Think about the chronology then reinterpret my question.
When I was 12 I was very active. To only ever have seen USB-C this person might well be a prodigy.
Again, honest question. Calm down with the hate boys and girls, try not to assume everyone is malicious
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=wlesieutre. To have joined HN at the age of 3 would be quite the prodigy.
Huh, evidently this hasn't been sufficiently abstracted into hardware/software modules? I find that sort of surprising given the maturity of the problem, though I guess some things just aren't that simple.
I didn't know you could add nvme disk to the pinebook pro. The emmc storage was turning me off, but with this the machine seem to be more attractive to me. If it has upgradable cpu as well I would seriously consider using this laptop, just need to figure out shipping as international shipping is usually handled by the awful state-owned postal company here, which for some reason can't successfully deliver anything to my address.
The keyboard is a cheap no-name, far worse than a Thinkpad keyboard or an Apple keyboard. I had trouble with the button S since the beginning.
But this is fine for such a cheap laptop.