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The specs look really decent for a regular eInk device, but the price is too high. Onyx Boox is priced similarly, but runs Android, making it instantly compatib

The specs look really decent for a regular eInk device, but the price is too high. Onyx Boox is priced similarly, but runs Android, making it instantly compatible with all kinds of eReaders (including Kindle, blergh). PineNote is risking the fate of reMarkable: great hardware, but extremely poor software.

stavros 2y ago
Isn't that what Pine does? Good hardware, and then the community is responsible for the software? My issue with Pine devices is that the community has largely fail to make something good out of them, so they've remained paperweights (please correct me if my impression here is wrong).
- cyberax 2y ago
  A good eReader with audiobook support and with annotations is not a simple application. A community can only do so much for such niche devices. And this ignores other applications, like shared whiteboards, note organizers, etc.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    If it can run koreader it's 80% of the way there. Don't know about audio books though
    - arunabha 2y ago
      It can. I have the developer edition and it came with a primitive but functional android version which I was able to get Fdroid installed and subsequently, KOReader and Termux.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  IME, pine doesn't make good hardware. It's pretty terrible quality (cheap flimsy plastic, dead pixels, etc) and then they expect the "community" to work around the short comings/lack of vision and make it into a real, usable product. I've been burned by the allure of Pine's hacker vibe. It's bullshit, IMO.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    I guess it depends on what you want. I own a Pine Quartz64 board and Pinecil, both of which are perfectly fine in quality and functionality. Maybe their white-label tablets and laptops are bad but I don't know what people expected. For stuff where support matters, they do pretty alright.
  - rjsw 2y ago
    I have a Pinebook and a Pinebook Pro, neither had dead pixels.
shakna 2y ago
The Boox does so by breaching quite a number of legal licenses, the PineNote seems to have actually done their due diligence and not just shrugged off the requirements that they might face.
jolmg 2y ago
The market they cater to are those that want to use linux distros in devices beyond PCs and laptops. For that market, the only eink tablets that exist are this one, to a lesser extent reMarkable (but AFAIK you can't really run X11 or Wayland on it), and maybe an eink portable monitor with an RPi or similar board and a battery bank taped to the back. Onyx Boox doesn't qualify. From that perspective, with such few choices of tablets, $400 doesn't seem that bad.
weikju 2y ago
> but the price is too high. Correction: the devices are not subsidized by ads or paywalls features or services. (Though in Pine’s case they are subsidized by unpaid workers trying to make software work on them)
- cyberax 2y ago
  Boox is not subsidized either (although they don't release their kernel sources).

stavros 2y ago

Isn't that what Pine does? Good hardware, and then the community is responsible for the software? My issue with Pine devices is that the community has largely fail to make something good out of them, so they've remained paperweights (please correct me if my impression here is wrong).

cyberax 2y ago
A good eReader with audiobook support and with annotations is not a simple application. A community can only do so much for such niche devices. And this ignores other applications, like shared whiteboards, note organizers, etc.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  If it can run koreader it's 80% of the way there. Don't know about audio books though
  - arunabha 2y ago
    It can. I have the developer edition and it came with a primitive but functional android version which I was able to get Fdroid installed and subsequently, KOReader and Termux.
candiddevmike 2y ago
IME, pine doesn't make good hardware. It's pretty terrible quality (cheap flimsy plastic, dead pixels, etc) and then they expect the "community" to work around the short comings/lack of vision and make it into a real, usable product. I've been burned by the allure of Pine's hacker vibe. It's bullshit, IMO.
- talldayo 2y ago
  I guess it depends on what you want. I own a Pine Quartz64 board and Pinecil, both of which are perfectly fine in quality and functionality. Maybe their white-label tablets and laptops are bad but I don't know what people expected. For stuff where support matters, they do pretty alright.
- rjsw 2y ago
  I have a Pinebook and a Pinebook Pro, neither had dead pixels.

shakna 2y ago

The Boox does so by breaching quite a number of legal licenses, the PineNote seems to have actually done their due diligence and not just shrugged off the requirements that they might face.

jolmg 2y ago

The market they cater to are those that want to use linux distros in devices beyond PCs and laptops. For that market, the only eink tablets that exist are this one, to a lesser extent reMarkable (but AFAIK you can't really run X11 or Wayland on it), and maybe an eink portable monitor with an RPi or similar board and a battery bank taped to the back. Onyx Boox doesn't qualify. From that perspective, with such few choices of tablets, $400 doesn't seem that bad.

weikju 2y ago

> but the price is too high. Correction: the devices are not subsidized by ads or paywalls features or services. (Though in Pine’s case they are subsidized by unpaid workers trying to make software work on them)

cyberax 2y ago
Boox is not subsidized either (although they don't release their kernel sources).