Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pinebook – A $100 14" ARM laptop

pine64.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–75 of 75 posts

Re: Pinebook – A $100 14" ARM laptop

#71

Post by emptythought »

rwmj wrote: post #20
jlebrech wrote: post #12

why not something like this https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gpd-pocket-7-0-umpc-lapto... those 14" would be better served with a better cpu

That's also 4.5x as expensive. I wouldn't mind something like the original 1999(?) Sony Viao which had a really awesome half-width form factor: https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CPmuEiWzAXOiJxBRD98rJ_86x1Y...

This design actually continued for quite a while. The last model came out around 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Vaio_P_series

Unfortunately, it's saddled with probably the worst series of atom intel made, the original Z(with the awful powerVR gpu).

They still go for quite a bit on ebay, because people love the 1600x768 form factor. I had one for a while, but ended up selling it because i couldn't get over how bad the performance was(720p youtube was a no go, for example). The GPD is sort of a replacement in spirit, but i liked that form factor a lot.

Re: Pinebook – A $100 14" ARM laptop

#72

Post by rwmj »

emptythought wrote: post #71
rwmj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also 4.5x as expensive. I wouldn't mind something like the original 1999(?) Sony Viao which had a really awesome half-width form factor: https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CPmuEiWzAXOiJxBRD98rJ_86x1Y...

This design actually continued for quite a while. The last model came out around 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Vaio_P_series Unfortunately, it's saddled with probably the worst series of atom intel made, the original Z(with the awful powerVR gpu). They still go for quite a bit on ebay, because people love the 1600x768 form factor. I had one for a while, but ended up selling it because i couldn't get over h…

Yeah - I don't get that. People are still reselling your computers on ebay for far more than they should and no one at Sony / any other computer company thinks that maybe it might be a good idea to investigate why.

What I particularly remember about that computer was that it slipped perfectly into the inside pocket of my jacket (remember this is a full featured circa-1999 laptop running Linux!)

Re: Pinebook – A $100 14" ARM laptop

#73

Post by prophesi »

tiagoespinha wrote: post #69
prophesi wrote: post #62

I've been using Pine products since their Kickstarter, and received my 11'' Pinebook about two weeks ago. I currently use it for quick, on-the-go dev work. Mine is set so that it boots from the internal 16gb eMMC into Ubuntu Xenial w/ i3wm. Then, I can either extend the storage or have it boot into Android, or any other distro, if I have an SD card inserted. The Android build is well-refined with very few issues; jus…

What's your experience with i3 on it? Is it lightweight enough to be usable as an Internet device?

Yep! It's a decent web browsing experience with Chromium once you configure some of the settings, and use at least uMatrix to block some of the heftier Javascript. And you can use SMTube to play Youtube videos.

I'm currently running Chromium with a few open tabs, SMTube, VS Code, and Hexchat without any problems.

Re: Pinebook – A $100 14" ARM laptop

#74

Post by prophesi »

rlpb wrote: post #63
prophesi wrote: post #62

I've been using Pine products since their Kickstarter, and received my 11'' Pinebook about two weeks ago. I currently use it for quick, on-the-go dev work. Mine is set so that it boots from the internal 16gb eMMC into Ubuntu Xenial w/ i3wm. Then, I can either extend the storage or have it boot into Android, or any other distro, if I have an SD card inserted. The Android build is well-refined with very few issues; jus…

> They're also working on getting Linux on the mainline kernel... This was my first question, and there's no answer in their FAQ. Thank you for answering it. I used a Samsung ARM Chromebook as my main laptop for many years, running Ubuntu. I only stopped two weeks ago when the keyboard finally broke (it did very well for how much it cost). The biggest problem I had was that driver support didn't appear in the mainlin…

Yeah, that's the biggest issue with ARM. It doesn't matter what the specs are if the driver's don't work. The reason Raspberry Pi is so great is because of its huge community support to iron out all of its issues. There are plenty of SoC's out there with a lot of wasted potential because of their lack of support, and the fact that vendors only give you binary blobs for critical system drivers...

Thankfully, Pine64 has had a decent community these past two years so I'm not terribly afraid of the Pinebook getting left in the dust. But it's still a gamble.

Re: Pinebook – A $100 14" ARM laptop

#75

Post by nbanks »

jlebrech wrote: post #12

why not something like this https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gpd-pocket-7-0-umpc-lapto... those 14" would be better served with a better cpu

This is an interesting product. I like the form factor, but it would be tough to get used to the keyboard. Reaching over the pointing stick/mouse buttons for the space bar could be doable--I managed to type on a Toshiba Libretto which had a similar problem because the case was higher than the keyboard so I had to hold my thumb sideways. I also use Dvorak so the small ,.? keys would be wvz instead. The touch screen looks way nicer than the mouse.
Post reply on HN