10 ms·

I have this laptop. The beauty of it is that it is unashamedly bad. It is the humblest of laptops. The body is a direct copy of the 13" MacBook Air. As a compu

I have this laptop. The beauty of it is that it is unashamedly bad. It is the humblest of laptops. The body is a direct copy of the 13" MacBook Air. As a computer, it is at least as usable as a Raspberry Pi. The teardown photos are hilarious because the motherboard only takes up about 1/6 the internal space. The rest is empty. https://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/ https://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/ It comes with Ubuntu 16.04, but there are other distros available that work to varying degrees. Since Firefox Quantum came out it's actually pretty usable for web browsing. Features: * It does in fact turn on. * It boots surprisingly fast, since it is running on flash memory. * There is an HDMI port, which may work in the future. * The battery life is fantastic, due to it's meager CPU. * Most have no more than 2 dead pixels. * You can charge it from another computer's USB port. * Potato quality camera. * It costs less than a replacement battery for my ThinkPad.

tonteldoos 8y ago
I just added my name to the BTO list. How long did you have to wait before they contacted you (and then before it shipped)? I can't seem to find anything about that on their site...
- unlimitedbacon 8y ago
  They are making them in batches. Whenever they get enough people on the waiting list they send out the order emails, then they manufacture the batch and ship them out. Once I was able to actually place my order I received it 3 weeks later.
zaarn 8y ago
What is the actual battery life? If it has a decent one (atleast 12 hours) I could use it as a travel notebook instead of my hefty thinkpad.
- pizza234 8y ago
  A quad core A53 consumes around 2W when idle. The battery is 37Wh, so I don't think it can make 12 hours (including screen consumption).
  - srcmap 8y ago
    2W when idle is very high. Are you sure it is just the Core A53 or is it measured in power/battery connection which account for the display, wifi, DDR, IO, etc? I did power profile for cellphone SOC couple years ago. Typical power usage for CPU is very low - milli-watts or less range for IDLE, worst case 1-2 W at full performance mode OP (Operating Point). When I profiled it, the Display, Wifi module consumed a lot more power than CPU/SOC during "normal" operations.
    - pizza234 8y ago
      I surely used the wrong term - I meant that the entire board consumes around 2W in idle/light workload. I can't guarantee about the precision; 2W may be 1.5W or 2.5W on my tool (it doesn't have decimals), although, I've measured my XU4 consumption, and it's consistent with third party measurements (5W on idle).
icc97 8y ago
> * It does in fact turn on. Genius. I was seriously doubting how it was possible to be this cheap.
newscracker 8y ago
> The teardown photos are hilarious because the motherboard only takes up about 1/6 the internal space. The rest is empty. https://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/ https://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/ As mentioned in that review, the software part seems to be a problem area for Pine. That could also be why it's cheap (because it's mainly the hardware alone that one is paying for). I got the original Pine64 board through the crowdfunding campaign, and I found the distro images provided to be lacking and also not kept updated. I wanted to use it like a headless server/NAS kind of setup with VNC access to run other programs as necessary, but found that a bit too hard to get done. So it's just been gathering dust since then.
- prophesi 8y ago
  The Ubuntu image has been actively maintained for a while now. Though now the maintainer is putting more effort towards Android 7.1. Which is the crux of the issue... These distros are usually maintained by just one community developer.
  - lphnull 8y ago
    serious question: why do people insist on using Ubuntu for low-end hardware like this and the PI??? Ubuntu is a cluttered nightmare full of so much unecessary stuff. Why not use a minimalistic non-GUI barebones version of Debian and build your OS up from there?
    - prophesi 8y ago
      I agree. I'm a fan of headless Debian, and running i3wm when needed. (I currently run headless Ubuntu, but only because Debian on the Pine is no longer maintained) If you need multimedia and heavy web browsing, run Android. That's what it was designed for.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    That's good news. Could you please point me to where these updated images are? I had been looking at the official site [1] once every few months last year, but didn't find the Ubuntu (or Debian) images updated. The dates are still from end of 2016. [1]: http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A64_Software_Release http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A64_Software_Release
justaguyhere 8y ago
Thank you for the link and the review. It does in fact turn on This one made me laugh
jandrese 8y ago
It has one of those goddamned AllWinner chips in it, I wouldn't hold my breath on the HDMI or any of the GPU acceleration working in the foreseeable future. Hardware drivers is not their business, nor is releasing docs that might allow someone else to write a driver. I have a dev board with one of those chips and getting any of the peripheral hardware working turned out to be a complete nightmare. I eventually gave up on it. Hopefully whomever is doing the Ubuntu port knows Mandarin and is living next to the factory in China so he can sneak out some driver specs.
- ShroudedNight 8y ago
  > Hardware drivers is not their business, nor is releasing docs that might allow someone else to write a driver. Is there a third road to device support? What's the point of selling hardware if you're not going to provide any sort of path to enablement?
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    This is a question that has puzzled linux devs for a long time. Why the hell release a linux only device, marketed at the DIY/hardcore user with no, or very limited ways to actually use the damn hardware? (like being stuck on some ancient kernels with 3.24x10^43 remote holes) Its pretty astonishing, and seems to be primarily driven over paranoia about IP/patents. After the answer a lawyer is always going to give to the question "Is there legal risk here" is yes, companies arnt going to do better until we demand they do.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    I'm sure they release documentation - under NDA - to companies buying this. However the legalese probably makes it impossible to use those documents to release the source to a linux driver. Hackers like us are not a large market. Those who need a lot of CPUs for something that nobody even realizes has a CPU are ultimately a much larger market.
- guidoism 8y ago
  Looking at the pics there looks like enough space to be able to experiment with other dev boards. I wonder if we can just think of it as a case. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
lphnull 8y ago
People who say that the raspeberry PI is "bad" and "barely useable" say so because Ubuntu + Chrome + botnet social networking sites tend to slow your PI to a crawl. If you configure i3, compton, and build your own distro from scratch WITHOUT ubuntu, then the rpi can actually be very fast and snappy for programming. If this laptop is anything like the raspberry pi, then it will require LOTS of customization to get the OS to work right. But once it's configured just right and you stay away from botnet browsers and sites like FB and IG, then the pi is actually quite nice.
- tomxor 8y ago
  Yup, just _not_ using a massive DE goes most of the way for improving performance, especially on little devices like this. i3wm is great for this because it's a tiling window manager for both the masses and for the expert. Also once you are using i3 then using Debian instead of Ubuntu makes little difference to the user while going a fair way to removing a lot of bloat. However suggesting linux from scratch is a bit extreme, it can be fun but you can get 99% of the benefits with i3 alone and maybe choosing a distro with a lighter HD footprint. Building your own OS is a lot of work for most people on the otherhand, and will scare people off your otherwise sound suggestion :P
  - lphnull 8y ago
    Well said. :) Personally, I don't think laptops like the Pinebook should ever be used by the masses because, like you said, building your own OS from scratch is difficult, even for the tech savvy! And no I'm not talking about compiling your own Gentoo yourself. What I mean is just starting with a barebones distro with NOTHING installed, then sudo apt-get intsall your carefully selected list of packages- followed by tons and tons of googling and man pages to figure out how to configure your config files in just the right way. This is how I learned linux- the hard way. My powerful windows 10 workstation died one day, and I decided to actually try using my abandoned rpI for day to day use. It took a LOT of googling, but I finally figured out how to make my pi enjoyable after close to half a year's worth of effort. I'm definitely buying this laptop when I get paid because I am one of the few people out there who's masochistic enough to enjoy pi-like devices. This laptop is EXACTLY what I have been looking for.
X-Istence 8y ago
> * It does in fact turn on. That is something you and I both have experienced with this laptop :P As for the rest, it really is bad. Like really bad. Although I did get lucky, I have 0 dead pixels.

tonteldoos 8y ago

I just added my name to the BTO list. How long did you have to wait before they contacted you (and then before it shipped)? I can't seem to find anything about that on their site...

unlimitedbacon 8y ago
They are making them in batches. Whenever they get enough people on the waiting list they send out the order emails, then they manufacture the batch and ship them out. Once I was able to actually place my order I received it 3 weeks later.

zaarn 8y ago

What is the actual battery life? If it has a decent one (atleast 12 hours) I could use it as a travel notebook instead of my hefty thinkpad.

pizza234 8y ago
A quad core A53 consumes around 2W when idle. The battery is 37Wh, so I don't think it can make 12 hours (including screen consumption).
- srcmap 8y ago
  2W when idle is very high. Are you sure it is just the Core A53 or is it measured in power/battery connection which account for the display, wifi, DDR, IO, etc? I did power profile for cellphone SOC couple years ago. Typical power usage for CPU is very low - milli-watts or less range for IDLE, worst case 1-2 W at full performance mode OP (Operating Point). When I profiled it, the Display, Wifi module consumed a lot more power than CPU/SOC during "normal" operations.
  - pizza234 8y ago
    I surely used the wrong term - I meant that the entire board consumes around 2W in idle/light workload. I can't guarantee about the precision; 2W may be 1.5W or 2.5W on my tool (it doesn't have decimals), although, I've measured my XU4 consumption, and it's consistent with third party measurements (5W on idle).

icc97 8y ago

> * It does in fact turn on. Genius. I was seriously doubting how it was possible to be this cheap.

newscracker 8y ago

> The teardown photos are hilarious because the motherboard only takes up about 1/6 the internal space. The rest is empty. https://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/ https://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/ As mentioned in that review, the software part seems to be a problem area for Pine. That could also be why it's cheap (because it's mainly the hardware alone that one is paying for). I got the original Pine64 board through the crowdfunding campaign, and I found the distro images provided to be lacking and also not kept updated. I wanted to use it like a headless server/NAS kind of setup with VNC access to run other programs as necessary, but found that a bit too hard to get done. So it's just been gathering dust since then.

prophesi 8y ago
The Ubuntu image has been actively maintained for a while now. Though now the maintainer is putting more effort towards Android 7.1. Which is the crux of the issue... These distros are usually maintained by just one community developer.
- lphnull 8y ago
  serious question: why do people insist on using Ubuntu for low-end hardware like this and the PI??? Ubuntu is a cluttered nightmare full of so much unecessary stuff. Why not use a minimalistic non-GUI barebones version of Debian and build your OS up from there?
  - prophesi 8y ago
    I agree. I'm a fan of headless Debian, and running i3wm when needed. (I currently run headless Ubuntu, but only because Debian on the Pine is no longer maintained) If you need multimedia and heavy web browsing, run Android. That's what it was designed for.
- newscracker 8y ago
  That's good news. Could you please point me to where these updated images are? I had been looking at the official site [1] once every few months last year, but didn't find the Ubuntu (or Debian) images updated. The dates are still from end of 2016. [1]: http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A64_Software_Release http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A64_Software_Release

justaguyhere 8y ago

Thank you for the link and the review. It does in fact turn on This one made me laugh

jandrese 8y ago

It has one of those goddamned AllWinner chips in it, I wouldn't hold my breath on the HDMI or any of the GPU acceleration working in the foreseeable future. Hardware drivers is not their business, nor is releasing docs that might allow someone else to write a driver. I have a dev board with one of those chips and getting any of the peripheral hardware working turned out to be a complete nightmare. I eventually gave up on it. Hopefully whomever is doing the Ubuntu port knows Mandarin and is living next to the factory in China so he can sneak out some driver specs.

ShroudedNight 8y ago
> Hardware drivers is not their business, nor is releasing docs that might allow someone else to write a driver. Is there a third road to device support? What's the point of selling hardware if you're not going to provide any sort of path to enablement?
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  This is a question that has puzzled linux devs for a long time. Why the hell release a linux only device, marketed at the DIY/hardcore user with no, or very limited ways to actually use the damn hardware? (like being stuck on some ancient kernels with 3.24x10^43 remote holes) Its pretty astonishing, and seems to be primarily driven over paranoia about IP/patents. After the answer a lawyer is always going to give to the question "Is there legal risk here" is yes, companies arnt going to do better until we demand they do.
- bluGill 8y ago
  I'm sure they release documentation - under NDA - to companies buying this. However the legalese probably makes it impossible to use those documents to release the source to a linux driver. Hackers like us are not a large market. Those who need a lot of CPUs for something that nobody even realizes has a CPU are ultimately a much larger market.
guidoism 8y ago
Looking at the pics there looks like enough space to be able to experiment with other dev boards. I wonder if we can just think of it as a case. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lphnull 8y ago

People who say that the raspeberry PI is "bad" and "barely useable" say so because Ubuntu + Chrome + botnet social networking sites tend to slow your PI to a crawl. If you configure i3, compton, and build your own distro from scratch WITHOUT ubuntu, then the rpi can actually be very fast and snappy for programming. If this laptop is anything like the raspberry pi, then it will require LOTS of customization to get the OS to work right. But once it's configured just right and you stay away from botnet browsers and sites like FB and IG, then the pi is actually quite nice.

tomxor 8y ago
Yup, just _not_ using a massive DE goes most of the way for improving performance, especially on little devices like this. i3wm is great for this because it's a tiling window manager for both the masses and for the expert. Also once you are using i3 then using Debian instead of Ubuntu makes little difference to the user while going a fair way to removing a lot of bloat. However suggesting linux from scratch is a bit extreme, it can be fun but you can get 99% of the benefits with i3 alone and maybe choosing a distro with a lighter HD footprint. Building your own OS is a lot of work for most people on the otherhand, and will scare people off your otherwise sound suggestion :P
- lphnull 8y ago
  Well said. :) Personally, I don't think laptops like the Pinebook should ever be used by the masses because, like you said, building your own OS from scratch is difficult, even for the tech savvy! And no I'm not talking about compiling your own Gentoo yourself. What I mean is just starting with a barebones distro with NOTHING installed, then sudo apt-get intsall your carefully selected list of packages- followed by tons and tons of googling and man pages to figure out how to configure your config files in just the right way. This is how I learned linux- the hard way. My powerful windows 10 workstation died one day, and I decided to actually try using my abandoned rpI for day to day use. It took a LOT of googling, but I finally figured out how to make my pi enjoyable after close to half a year's worth of effort. I'm definitely buying this laptop when I get paid because I am one of the few people out there who's masochistic enough to enjoy pi-like devices. This laptop is EXACTLY what I have been looking for.

X-Istence 8y ago

> * It does in fact turn on. That is something you and I both have experienced with this laptop :P As for the rest, it really is bad. Like really bad. Although I did get lucky, I have 0 dead pixels.