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Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

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Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#181

Post by srcmap »

pizza234 wrote: post #129
zaarn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

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.

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#182

Post by rsync »

boomlinde wrote: post #108
petee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have a reference for that? The Main Board schematic also shows a 2.0 port...

I think he's trying to make a "why no USB3.0 in 2018" type argument

Close ... "why no USB3.0 port in 2015" is closer to my sentiment ...

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#184

Post by jandrese »

orionblastar wrote: post #111

It reminds me of the Commodore 64 that it was underpowered but sold cheaper than the other computers. I got a 99 dollar used Dell 64 but dual core system with Windows 10 on it upgraded from Windows 7. Runs quite well, but it is not a gaming machine.

The Commie64 didn't really have competition in its market space, which is a big reason why it was able to sell so well despite being kind of crappy.

This laptop is competing against Chromebooks, Netbooks, old but still functional laptops, etc...

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#185

Post by jandrese »

unlimitedbacon wrote: post #88

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/ It comes with Ubuntu 16.04, but…

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.

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#186

Post by jandrese »

crowbahr wrote: post #68
examancer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10000mah and an ARM A53 mean it should last 10 hours or more with moderate brightness settings. It's hard to beat this for a light cheap terminal/browser with plenty of battery if that is something you need.

Reviews I read said 4-6 hours. Poorly optimized probably.

I bet it's software compositing. GPU acceleration doesn't work on those boards last time I checked, so it's probably having to do a lot more work on the CPU. It would also explain why it feels so sluggish despite being on paper more powerful than a Raspberry Pi. You should probably forget about trying to play video on it.

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#187

Post by prophesi »

I've had the Pinebook 11.6'' since its initial release. It's been great for doing occasional server maintenance on-the-go.

A few tips:

- You can install an OS on the internal 16gb memory. Then swap in an SD card to run other OSes.

- Performance is not too bad if you run i3wm. And Firefox Quantum helps it out even further.

- I've yet to try this out (waiting on another SD card to come in the mail), but shadeslayer released an image for the pinebook that runs KDE with accelerated X11 & video playback support[0]. Which is pretty impressive if you know anything about Mali and the issue of closed-source binary blobs.

[0] https://www.netrunner.com/netrunner-for-pinebook/

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#188

Post by greenshackle2 »

crowbahr wrote: post #72
shams93 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I went the same way as you got a t420 upgraded to ssd and threw Ubuntu studio in it and it smokes. I use it for everything from native Android development to music and video production and with lxde compared to windows 10 it's smoking fast even though it's not exactly lightweight. When you dj with a laptop the last thing you want is a flimsy device. Mixxx enables me to dj on the same device I use for software en…

Do you have the i7 or i5? How is the android emulator (or do you debug on the phone)? I'm looking into a better mobile setup.

I bought a refurbished T410 from Ebay with an i7, discrete GPU and 1440x900 display, for like $250, and put a SSD in it.

The big limitations of this model are:

- Display has poor contrast

- Even with discrete GPU, worse performance than modern integrated graphics - it can drive 1080p monitors and play old and some indie games, not much more than that

- Max 8GB of RAM

- No USB 3 (but I have a USB 3 express card which works ok)

- Not great battery life - more recent CPUs are not THAT much faster but they are less power-hungry

Its upsides are:

- Classic thinkpad keyboard and clit mouse (if you're into that)

- Cheap, easy to find refurbished accessories (though I don't know for how much longer this will be true)

For my use (mostly development on Ubuntu), it works pretty well. For computation heavy stuff I remote into a 6-core Dell Precision I got refurbished for $400 (DDR3 ECC RAM is cheap as dirt).

Unless you have particular needs for high-perf CPU or GPU, or want extra-long battery life I'd buy a refurb and throw an SSD in it over buying a brand new laptop every time.

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#189

Post by ShroudedNight »

jandrese wrote: post #185
unlimitedbacon wrote: post #88

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/ It comes with Ubuntu 16.04, but…

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 u…

> 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?

Re: Pinebook: An Affordable 64-bit ARM based Open Source Notebook

#190

Post by lphnull »

unlimitedbacon wrote: post #88

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/ It comes with Ubuntu 16.04, but…

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.

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