81–90 of 250 posts
Honest question. Why don't people buy old laptops instead of cheaper new ones? I'm no expert but the cost to performance ratio isn't to far off. I am typing this on T420 Thinkpad laptop. I get desiring to use open hardware but at the detriment of performance doesn't quite make sense.
I find it a bit slow for web browsing with a heavy modern browser, but I haven't spent the time to find a more optimized one.
I'd say that for $99 it's nicer than most $300-400 laptops I've used in terms of build quality, and it makes a great dumbish terminal.
For the price I paid, if it got broken/lost/stolen I wouldn't be too worried about it. A handy little toy that I use more often than I thought I would.
This version is 32-bit, but it has 4 cores @ 1.2GHz and 4GB of RAM. Also, it is actually open source, meaning that all the electronic design files (made in KiCAD) are available on GitHub and as soon as we have decided on the correct formats the same will be true for the mechanical/case parts, so you will be even able to 3D print replacement parts.
I could not find the design files for Pinebook so I'm not sure what is "Open Source" about it? Schematics are not sources.
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.
Anyway, I'm happy to see more activity in the ARM space as that means more eyeballs on ARM Linux applications, potentially more issues filed and bugs fixed.
Reviews here to save people doing what I just did: https://www.techradar.com/reviews/pinebook-14-inch https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/pinebook-64-review/ It looks like it might be worth the price. Anyone have one here? Any idea on delivery times?
First, they intentionally gloss over the performance aspect; as a owner of multiple ARM boards, I can tell you that the A53 performance is terrible for desktop usage; it's not even good for headless servers (although "terrible" is relative).
Second, I'm very skeptical about the 64-bit claim, which they haven't investigated. While ARM CPUs are 64-bit themselves, ARM Linux distros are typically 32-bit.
And finally, don't underestimate the lack of support for ARM builds. While of course, the full Ubuntu repositories are available, for software outside them, the "compiling from source" can be troublesome for ARM architectures.
I think that a high-power ARM laptop (ie. A15 or more) would be interesting; but not a low-power one.
Honest question. Why don't people buy old laptops instead of cheaper new ones? I'm no expert but the cost to performance ratio isn't to far off. I am typing this on T420 Thinkpad laptop. I get desiring to use open hardware but at the detriment of performance doesn't quite make sense.
Because the batteries are knackered and new ones aren’t available for old models. Tho’ this does vary by vendor. Chinese knock-off batteries are usually available but carry their own risks.
Honest question. Why don't people buy old laptops instead of cheaper new ones? I'm no expert but the cost to performance ratio isn't to far off. I am typing this on T420 Thinkpad laptop. I get desiring to use open hardware but at the detriment of performance doesn't quite make sense.
Honest question. Why don't people buy old laptops instead of cheaper new ones? Because the batteries are knackered and new ones aren’t available for old models. Tho’ this does vary by vendor. Chinese knock-off batteries are usually available but carry their own risks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question. Why don't people buy old laptops instead of cheaper new ones? Because the batteries are knackered and new ones aren’t available for old models. Tho’ this does vary by vendor. Chinese knock-off batteries are usually available but carry their own risks.
While I agree on the battery part, which is generally what dies first (that or fans), most batteries are available on eBay. I recently bought a new battery for a T60, a laptop which is over ten years old.
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/
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.
Honest question. Why don't people buy old laptops instead of cheaper new ones? I'm no expert but the cost to performance ratio isn't to far off. I am typing this on T420 Thinkpad laptop. I get desiring to use open hardware but at the detriment of performance doesn't quite make sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of issues do people conceal?
I got a refurb Thinkpad and: 1. Battery puked out pretty quickly, so that's $100 (AUD) to fix on a $500 second hand laptop. 2. Some keys stopped working, could be bad luck as laptops have shite keyboards normally. Both are not necessarily concealed issues BUT this is the kind of shit you are dealing with with second hand laptops and the savings don't seem to justify it, for me anyway. Plus less NSAWare. The main bene…
While a refurbisher could potentially insert malware, they're not going to do it for the NSA.
Old Thinkpads are also generally well supported by libreboot/coreboot, so that's one less attack vector to worry about.