
Pinetab – 10.1″ Linux Tablet with Detached Backlit Keyboard - reddotX
https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-tablet-with-detached-backlit-keyboard
======
neonate
[https://archive.vn/Lm8EA](https://archive.vn/Lm8EA)

~~~
zachberger
I get certificate invalid here..

~~~
dredmorbius
Try:

[https://archive.today/Lm8EA](https://archive.today/Lm8EA)

[https://archive.is/Lm8EA](https://archive.is/Lm8EA)

[https://archive.fo/Lm8EA](https://archive.fo/Lm8EA)

[https://archive.li/Lm8EA](https://archive.li/Lm8EA)

[https://archive.vn/Lm8EA](https://archive.vn/Lm8EA)

[https://archive.md/Lm8EA](https://archive.md/Lm8EA)

[https://archive.ph/Lm8EA](https://archive.ph/Lm8EA)

One typically works.

List:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today)

Cloudflare is in a grudge match with archive.today:

[https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-
error-1001/182...](https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-
error-1001/18227)

~~~
tomxor
All invalid certs/403, even google webcache is 404ing, how elusive...

------
jjice
Absolutely incredible for the $120 price point. If they release a PineTab Pro
in the future with 4 (or dare I say 8GB) of ram, I'd be all over it. At that
point, I could really start to be productive. 2GB is a bit limiting for the
modern web unfortunately, but there is a ton of potential here. I'm
considering buying one to use as my main machine for this next year at Uni.
Taking notes in VS Code/Vim would be fine, but I could see some of my course
load being hindered by the ram.

As a portable SSH machine, a kid's first computer, or a nice portable machine
with a screen for hobby projects, I think this will be fantastic.

~~~
sylvain_kerkour
In case where the pine64 team is reading: +1

8GB RAM, 128GB MMC, USB-C for up to 300$ and it will be the perfect Microsoft
Surface Go's contender I'm waiting for!

~~~
qwerty456127
> 128GB MMC

Why MMC when there is NVMe?

~~~
fomine3
eMMC should be cheaper. But I'm also prefer NVMe for computer.

------
slantyyz
I noticed this has a removable battery, which makes this very interesting to
me.

What I'd like to know is if it will work with the battery compartment empty on
AC power only.

I'd like to have "smart" displays wall mounted around the house with
dashboards on them. I've read about so many instances where people used wall
mounted iPads and Android tablets where the batteries would swell after a
period of use.

~~~
bigiain
> I've read about so many instances where people used wall mounted iPads and
> Android tablets where the batteries would swell after a period of use.

Made that mistake myself. I now have a wall mounted iPad with the charger
plugged into a timer powerpoint that only switches on for 1hr a day. Been
running like that for 5+ years now without issue. (I'd planned for that to
just be a proof of concept, and to use a wifi powerpoint that'd turn on when
the battery dropped to 20% and back off where it hit 80%. The easy solution
has turned out to be "good enough" and has remained in production, like that
cronjob perl script from 2004...)

~~~
throwaway41597
Really cool! Could you give specifics about the typical low and high of the
battery cycle, please? (from XX% to XX%).

~~~
bigiain
I'd been intending to aim for 20%-80% cycles, because I read that's "good for
lithium batteries".

The timer switch I grabbed to do my proof of concept only has 15min resolution
(it's a weird old mechanical one where you move plastic pins in the stop/start
time rings). I recall setting it to 45mins because the docs says the iPad gets
80% charge in 1 hour, and it'd occasionally run down and switch off, so I
bumped it up to 1hr and haven't touched it since.

I just checked now, it charged for an hour overnight finishing ~10.5 hours
ago, and is currently saying 59% charge. I honestly have no idea how low or
high the charge level gets, just that I haven't needed to wake it back up from
a shutdown in over 4 years...

I've come to doubt the details there are important. Don't leave it on charge
24x7, that'll kill it fairly quickly (~9 months in one data point of mine).
Charge it long enough and regularly enough to keep it running, but at the low
end of that spectrum. Keep in mind my goal here is less "extend the life of
the battery", and more " prevent the battery from swelling up and damaging the
device/catching fire", but I suspect there's a fair bit of crossover between
those goals, since I've not needed to increase the charge time in response to
any battery capacity decrease over 5 years (which in retrospect surprises me
somewhat).

If I was aiming to maintain the best possible range in an electric vehicle,
I'd probably pay much more attention to max charge and min discharge levels,
but "the simplest possible thing" has been working well enough for me to just
leave it alone.

If it dies on me tomorrow, I'll be happy enough with the use I got out of it
and the tradeoff of time I spent futzing with it.

(Note: I'm also quite familiar with abusing LiPo batteries way past safe
limits, I raced FPV quadcopters 5-6 years back, and in my worst excesses, I'd
be aiming to completely drain a flight pack in ~2 minutes. They'd end up too
hot to touch, and start to decline to the point of not being race competitive
within 20 or 25 cycles. They'd also catch into unextinguishable fire in big
crashes and occasionally while charging. I have a healthy fear/respect of high
capacity and high current LiPo batteries...)

~~~
imtringued
I have a six year old phone that still runs on the original battery. The
capacity is pretty low but still lasts for 2-3 hours of active usage. Just
charge it for an hour per day and you'll be fine.

------
wpietri
Very interesting! I've been looking for cheap wall-mountable touchscreens so I
can have permanent, single-purpose interfaces and displays. For example, I
have a KanbanFlow board to track my work, and I use an old tablet mounted to
the wall next to my standing desk.

I was thinking I'd get cheap Android tablets and root them, but I'd much
rather support something where it's built for user control from the beginning.

~~~
jcun4128
Side thought... is it even cheaper if you just have displays/use an ESP to do
http requests to a local server... guess depends what they have to do. I mean
I think you would need a 32 to drive the display too vs. just an ESP01

~~~
slim
I don't think they're capable of displaying a web page

~~~
jcun4128
Oh maybe I didn't read parent comment thoroughly enough I was talking about
having a UI with defined buttons you click and it sends the http request.

Yeah missed the Kanban part

------
jandrese
They are serious about not making profit with these. $100 for a full up tablet
and it includes the keyboard/touchpad?

2GB of RAM is pretty limiting but 64GB of storage is quite respectable at this
price point. The 6AH battery pack is quite beefy too.

~~~
calvinmorrison
"When fulfilling the purchase, please bear in mind that we are offering the
PineTab at this price as a community service to PINE64 communities. If you
think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel, will prompt you to
file a PayPal dispute then please do not purchase the PineTab. Thank you."

no or low amounts of QA significantly reduce cost

~~~
greenshackle2
With regards to dead pixels, every vendor I know of has terms like this, it's
just hidden in the warranty small print, not on the store page:

[https://support.lenovo.com/ca/en/solutions/ht035306](https://support.lenovo.com/ca/en/solutions/ht035306)

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/05/leaked_apple_dead...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/05/leaked_apple_dead_pixel_policy_allows_two_for_ipad_none_fir_iphone)

~~~
squarefoot
I wonder what are the odds of finding dead pixels today. I saw lots of them in
the past, and in a few cases they were really nasty to stand (imagine a pixel
stuck at full brightness in the center of a screen mostly containing dark
terminals) , but admittedly in the last 10 years or so I can't remember of a
single one. However, although all vendors bury the dead pixel disclaimer,
being so open about it makes one wonder if their quality checks are cheaper
than others. I would happily pay more to be 100% sure there are no dead pixels
btw.

~~~
greenshackle2
Just a thought, it's a PITA, but you can do it yourself by buying one, if it
has dead pixels resell it and buy a new one.

------
iicc
The link (store page) is unresponsive.

The webpage for the product is
[https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/](https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/)

~~~
dang
It seems to be working now, just slowly.

------
NikolaeVarius
How is touch screen on linux these days, I'm probably pick one up but can't
imagine running UBports on 2GB ram.

I would rather use i3/lighter DE + touch screen support for some GUI apps?

~~~
boogies
Someone's set up a sort of dwm-based DE on the Pinephone:

[https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/](https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/)

~~~
exikyut
[http://media.lrdu.org/sxmo_pinephone_demos/sxmo_demo_0_allfe...](http://media.lrdu.org/sxmo_pinephone_demos/sxmo_demo_0_allfeatures.mp4)
(MP4)

...well that was... _interesting_...

------
Abishek_Muthian
I like what Pine64 guys have been doing, great devices to hack at reasonable
price creating foundation for a pure linux based linux mobile devices; of
course projects like Ubuntu Touch, PureOS, PostmarketOS maturing at the right
time has been a blessing.

Now, this is what I need Pine64 - 'A small pocketable, user repairable linux
laptop with GSM module' which can replace smartphone. Current options are
GPD[1], One-netbook[2] both of which are expensive, not-user repairable, built
for windows.

Then there's planet computer's devices[3], but they seem to be android first
although they offer linux as multi-boot option.

Why pocketable linux laptop when there's PinePhone, Librem5? Well, the main
bottleneck in the linux app ecosystem is adapting it to the touch screen of
the smartphone. I think a pocketable linux laptop could serve well in the
interim, may be the form factor will prove better for productivity and will
stay as a separate profitable segment.

[1][http://gpd.hk/](http://gpd.hk/)

[2][https://www.1netbook.com/](https://www.1netbook.com/)

[3][https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/devices](https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/devices)

------
ssivark
The Pine folks have been doing fantastic work over the last several years.
Does anyone know of ways to support them other than buying products? I don’t
really need these gadgets right now, and don’t have the time to tinker, but
want to encourage the ecosystem from a long-term perspective. For example, I’d
love to give them some money and become a long-term
member/shareholder/something. I don’t really care for the rate of return; I’m
more interested in a reason to stay engaged with the organization as its
products might mature into my use cases, and help them along the way.

~~~
xnyan
One suggestion, buy a product for someone who could use it but doesn’t have
the resources. As a kid who loved to tinker and had no money this would have
meant the world to me at that time.

~~~
j05h
Was thinking the same...school donations maybe?

~~~
Vinnl
Many libraries also have programs for children interested in tech, might be
good to check with a local one.

------
veridies
This looks wonderful, and I bought it as soon as preorders opened; I'd love to
have a Linux tablet to read books on and take to work (I'm a teacher, not a
programmer). It definitely is pretty low-powered, though, and I'd appreciate a
higher-end alternative. Is there _any_ Windows-based tablet that you can
reliably and easily install Linux on?

~~~
ddevault
>Is there any Windows-based tablet that you can reliably and easily install
Linux on?

Samsung Series 7 Slate XE700T1A

~~~
shmerl
Are there any tablets that have open drivers for GPU and touchscreen? Problem
with blobs is that such tablets are forever stuck with ancient kernels.

~~~
ddevault
The one I mentioned works fine with the upstream kernel for everything. It
just has an Intel GPU.

~~~
shmerl
Good to know, thanks!

------
boogies
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii6lAjgfW3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii6lAjgfW3c)

If this functionality was demoed by Apple on a new $999 "MacPad Pro" there
would be arguments over if it was the end of the PC and the beginning of the
next generation of computing, a leap like the smartphone revolution.

Edits: price, s/this/this functionality/

I took this out of context (sorry), it's a very pre-production device that has
received a lot of work since then and will receive much more.
[https://www.pine64.org/2020/05/15/may-update-pinetab-pre-
ord...](https://www.pine64.org/2020/05/15/may-update-pinetab-pre-orders-
pinephone-qi-charging-more/)

~~~
deergomoo
Are we watching the same video? This is basically no different to what you get
on any Windows convertible (though the tablet-mode interactions are closer to
the iPad), except way, way jankier.

~~~
chrismorgan
Nah, that’s _way_ higher latency than my Surface Book (which is a much more
powerful machine, but is also driving a 3000×2000 display) gets. That video is
at 25fps, and exhibits latencies of 7–8 frames (~300ms) on scrolling a web
page, and 9–12 frames (~400ms) on resizing windows. I can’t measure latency
accurately on my device at present, but I estimate that I’m getting around
50ms of latency in both of those scenarios.

(Oh, I guess you were talking about the functionality, not the latency. Ah
well, I’ll leave this comment up anyway.)

------
jareds
Does anyone know if there custom OS has a screen reader? I'm totally blind and
this is priced at the point where I'd like to play with it assuming it's
usable for me.

~~~
exikyut
Wow, what an interesting question. Open source first-class accessible
tinkerer/maker-oriented hardware design.

That gets me wondering... what would be the ideal here? I don't have much
experience with blind-oriented usage but I get the impression blind users only
keep screens around for when software/the OS falls apart and orientational
cues completely break down... but perhaps sighted assistance is needed less
often than I presume, and blind users simply use phones and laptops with
screens because that's what dominates the market.

Maybe you could viably get away with having a quick-access mechanism that lets
someone use their own device's display whenever assistance is required. I can
totally see a device that serves VNC over HTML5 to any web browser via a
built-in hotspot, that would be pretty universal.

Which leads me to the question of how useful touchscreen gestures are - since
that's all touchscreens are useful for in a blind context - and if there isn't
a better input method than that. I get the impression keyboards are pretty
much "it". It would be pretty cool if your entire computer was a keyboard with
a 3.5mm headphone jack :)

The Pinetab is basically a highish-end ARM system with its own bits of novel
hardware added on, so the base question becomes "how usable is the mainline
AArch64 Linux experience for blind users?". I suspect it's somewhere between
"poor" and "fair"; and bespoke hardware in this device may add a small amount
of extra strain on top of that.

Now I'm puzzling over which mechanical keyboards are the thinnest, and if you
could cram a power bank and ARM development board into the footprint space
underneath.

~~~
naugtur
I've seen a computer in 2008 that was like the bottom part of a laptop and
between the keyboard and where the hinges would be it had a 3 row braille
display. It was pretty old at the time and quite thick, with modern technology
could be as thin as a tablet.

These things have a very narrow audience so they're one digit more expensive
than their regular counterparts.

------
bArray
Just purchased one, very excited. Looking forward to it arriving sometime in
August.

My use case is basic browsing, taking notes in meetings, reviewing papers
(using something like xournal), SSH'ing into remote machines, a small amount
of dev'ing (compiling on remote) and perhaps presentations (has HD output). I
travel alot and having a machine that doesn't break my back would be cool. If
the keyboard is half-way decent I may even use it for writing too.

The reason for this device over other existing solutions are many: low price,
built for Linux, lightweight, low-power (good battery), form factor (where did
you go netbooks :( ) and a great community!

------
gorgoiler
The further I get with computers the less I need. I’ve been teaching computer
graphics using a 160 x 48 pixel display rendering Unicode Braille dots. It’s
absolutely enough for:

\- random colored text

\- line drawing fun

\- circles

\- z buffers

\- convex hulls

\- ray tracing spheres

(Checkerboards are too noisy though, and no Newell teapots. Alas, if only my
browser supported PBM, the graphics format of winners.)

So yeah, bring it on! Doing more with less feels like a journey worth
traveling. I want one!

~~~
wltprgm
May I know what's that 160 x 48 display and processor you are using to teach?

I am interested to learn low level stuff like CPU assembly, operating system
and VGA, VBE, linear frame buffering graphics. I want to see how far I can go
with low end x86, arm, misp, and fpga devices

------
axegon_
I am not going to lie, I'm not a big fan of the arm experience on Linux. While
the situation has improved, it is still a painful experience. It has always
felt like you're trying to run windows 7 on a pentium II, regardless of
lightweight desktop environments or even no desktop environment. That said,
this does look like a very appealing solution for something to shove in the
backpack when hiking or whatnot, as opposed to carrying around a 1.5k
ultrabook. I'll keep an eye out and wait for some review and real-world
experiences and I might jump on that train.

~~~
imprettycool
Isn't the issue just drivers?

------
pathartl
I love what Pine is trying to do, but man those A53 CPUs and Mali-400 GPUs are
really pretty crummy. Similarly spec'd Allwinner chips were on the PlayStation
Classic and Nintendo Classic microconsoles.

~~~
SahAssar
Those were running emulators though, running native software will be more
efficient.

~~~
pathartl
The community has ported a bunch of native stuff and it still performs poorly.

------
drcongo
I have no idea what I'd do with one of these, but that price point is barely
more than a Raspberry Pi 4 with a few accessories. I think I might buy one.

------
JustSomeNobody
Pricing Details:

The PineTab – $99.99 The magnetic backlit keyboard – $19.99

That's interesting. I love my iPad mini 5, but at this price I may have to
pick one of these up.

~~~
duxup
Yeah for non iPad specific stuff ... just reading and streaming this might be
way more cost effective.

------
chrismorgan
I suppose the keyboard needs to be attached to operate?

I use a Surface Book. I’ve been interested to discover that I would quite
often like to have the keyboard continue to work after detaching the base,
because when drawing on the device a keyboard is still useful for switching
between tools, activating things, typing in precise values when necessary, _&
c._ To be sure, a large part of this is just that I’m using apps that haven’t
been optimised for keyboardless usage (I’m talking things like Krita,
Inkscape, OpenToonz), but even if they were, a keyboard would still be useful.
As it stands, I’d need to buy a second keyboard, one that worked by Bluetooth,
to achieve this goal.

(In the particular case of the Surface Book, detaching the base isn’t _quite_
as useful as you might imagine, because ¾ of the battery life is in it, so
you’ll get ~3h at most, <2h if using it much.)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's got pogo pins, it looks likely to just be a pogo pin USB port down there?
Pretty sure they'd mention if the keyboard was wireless. Honestly, I hate
having a second battery to worry about charging: I'd much rather a keyboard
just be a keyboard.

------
progval
The CPU vendor apparently distributes binaries for this SoC that infringe on
u-boot and linux's licenses: [https://linux-
sunxi.org/A64#GPL_Violations](https://linux-sunxi.org/A64#GPL_Violations)

Do you know if these binaries are required to run the Pinetab?

~~~
megous
No.

------
ocdtrekkie
I bought one. The USB configuration sounds a bit sad. USB 2.0 Type-A and
Micro-B is a very dated configuration, especially considering the PinePhone
has a USB-C. But I am interested in seeing how the ecosystem comes together
and the price is absolutely right for this thing.

------
mattlondon
If this had USB-C for charging I'd be really interested and would purchase. I
can live with the rest of the specs.

I know USB-C has a bad rep but it is honestly just amazing having one charger
that does everything. I don't want to regress from that

------
Sir_Substance
I've been waiting for this to come out. Unfortunately, I tried to buy the
pinetime late last year and discovered they only sell through paypal and you
need an account to make the payment, you can't just pay by credit card.

If there's anyone from pine watching: Please, add a normal credit card option.
Paypal is a horrid company. I'm prepared to pay directly with a credit card
via them, but I _will not_ make an account with them just to buy your stuff.
Please let me give you money without making a legal agreement with a third
party :(

~~~
rossvor
You don't need a paypal account to pay by credit card via paypal. Select "Pay
by Debit or Credit Card" when it asks you to login to paypal.

~~~
Sir_Substance
That option is enabled or disabled by the user.

Pine has (still) not enabled it:

[https://i.imgur.com/Y1OhCkX.png](https://i.imgur.com/Y1OhCkX.png)

In case anyone from pine is watching, here's the doc on how to do it:

[https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/payment...](https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/payments/guest-
payments/)

It's like....5 clicks.

~~~
rossvor
Interesting, it's enabled for me -- that's how I bought it -- without creating
an account. Maybe this feature is perhaps region locked somehow? I'm in UK.

EDIT: it is indeed gated by some vague heuristics[1].

>Buyers don't always have the option to complete their purchases without using
or creating a PayPal account. This option is presented based on several risk
factors, including but not limited to the buyer's PayPal purchase history,
PayPal cookies stored on the buyer's computer, the buyer's location, or a
credit assessment.

[1] [https://www.paypal.com/uk/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-
accept-...](https://www.paypal.com/uk/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-accept-
credit-cards-with-express-checkout-using-the-guest-checkout-option-ts1623)

~~~
Sir_Substance
>PayPal cookies stored on the buyer's computer

That's probably why. I use addons that autodelete cookies as soon as I leave
webpages because no one has the luxury of pretending they don't know how badly
cookies are abused at this point.

I guess the inevitable next step was for companies that abuse cookies to start
punishing people for refusing to take their shit.

I reiterate: paypal is a shit company. Pine, please provide an alternative.

------
leonidasv
It would be even greater with some quick accessible GPIO pins.

That would make this tablet the ultimate Pocket CHIP[1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP_(computer)#Pocket_CHIP_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP_\(computer\)#Pocket_CHIP_and_Pockulus)

------
ClumsyPilot
I've got an old windows tablet with similar specs, old intel atom, 2GB ram.
(linx1010b)

Its gathering dust because its so underpowered, could not find a use for it as
a GUI user device.

I think some kind of kiosk / iot hub with display application could work, if
you put in the effort.

~~~
zozbot234
Newer Linux releases generally work quite well on these tablets as far as
hardware support goes. The one thing that's marginally underpowered is the
amount of RAM, and in my experience 2GB still suffices for simple use cases.

------
bleegastan
...2GB RAM is a bit of a disappointment for those of us spoiled by higher end
devices (like my Note 10+ w/ Dex), BUT - there is room to expand with some
kinda SD and then map a bunch of SWAP space to it, right?

Won't a generous allocation of swap compensate?

~~~
exikyut
As someone who has more experience than I care to quantify regarding RAM-
starved, swap-abundant systems: no. Well... OK, a subjective measurement on
the "death by how many thousand cuts"-scale would be somewhere between 10,000
and 1,000,000 cuts, IMO, depending on what you're trying to do.

You'll also rapidly exhaust the SD card's flash lifetime, and all the spare
capacity... which will make the SD return read errors, nicely corrupting the
contents of RAM.

You can verify the slowdown/lag/pain factor easily enough: boot Linux on any
PC with `mem=2G`, attach an SD card you don't mind nuking :), and go nuts.

------
dmitrygr
Cortex-A53 is a _very_ slow _in-order_ core. Think Pentium 1 -level IPC. Eg:
it can dispatch at most one multiplication, and will stall the entire pipeline
for a few cycles if you try another one soon after. I doubt this is going to
perform well

~~~
rbanffy
OTOH, no speculative execution side channels.

------
aidenn0
This may finally replace my surface-rt for movies on long car-trips; it's a
16:10 rather than 16:9 but otherwise checks all the boxes: widescreen, usb
port (so I can just put files on an old thumb drive), and can run VLC.

------
julianlam
This is interesting to me because I'm in the market for a new tablet.

Is this more of a hacker device (IR blaster, odd assortment of ports, full OS,
etc.) or consumer? It should ideally pass the wife test...

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Not a ton of ports, USB 2.0 Type-A and Micro-B, Micro-HDMI out, SD card. But
there's an expansion card slot, which is pretty unheard of for a tablet. So
you can add like an SSD or a LoRa radio or what-have-you.

------
Havoc
I kinda feel like the screen lets it down a bit. Much of this appeals (M.2!),
but I can't see myself ever buying a 720p device again.

------
LargoLasskhyfv
So they wrapped some clam-shell around their SOPINE A64 COMPUTE MODULE?

[1]
[https://store.pine64.org/?product=sopine-a64](https://store.pine64.org/?product=sopine-a64)

[2]
[https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PINE_A64-LTS/SOPine](https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PINE_A64-LTS/SOPine)

Looks like _Resterampe_ /left-over sale to me.

Come on, 2GB? In 2020?

------
pivic
Noob question: please tell me that it's simple to remap the keyboard so that
it matches, say, a Swedish keyboard layout?

~~~
fsflover
You just change some config file and that's it.

------
pengaru
Meanwhile coming up on a month of waiting for my ubports pinephone to
arrive... Not even a shipping update yet.

~~~
ricecake
Uhhh yeah they have
[https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9942](https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9942)

~~~
pengaru
I purchased directly from their web store, not via a forum group buy or other
means. They have my contact information, and I have not received a single peep
to inform me on the status of my purchase. Just radio silence.

If I'm expected to go root out some forum thread to monitor progress on things
I purchase from the pine64 store, that's worth noting here to inform
everyone's expectations.

~~~
ricecake
You said they didn't give a shipping update. They did. Doesn't matter if you
don't like they way that they did so.

~~~
pengaru
They didn't give _me_ a shipping update.

They could post a shipping update on the wall of their local laundromat for
all the good that did me when I'm not monitoring their message forums.

If not for this thread, I'd still be operating in the dark having basically
forgotten I even bought the thing. I appreciate your comment pointing me at
the forum, pine64 should have emailed that link to everyone who ordered one in
the affected time period.

------
tvb12
Wow, Pine64 has a really beautiful logo.

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awinter-py
would love to know what the model is that lets these penetrate the mass market

I buy mine because I'll jump through any hoop to not carry around a fortune
500 in my pocket

For the consumer market -- runnability of android? hardware quality? low
price? Some compatibility factor that only an open company can hit?

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mjcohen
Took me quite a while, but I finally got my order in.

It'll come, eventually, I hope.

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benbojangles
I'm thinking a portable SDR setup

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mahesh_rm
Does it run vscode?

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11c1d5c57446
Does it run emacs?

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foo2020
2GB ram seems to be pretty limiting.

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SPQT
I'd rather get second hand iPad.

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yjftsjthsd-h
An iPad can't do things that this does; in particular, any pine product gives
you full control the device and the ability to execute arbitrary code.

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Maha-pudma
Is that a 30 day warranty? No thanks.

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michaelmrose
Most failures either happen shortly because something was made poorly or after
>1 year which is why extended warranties are mostly garbage.

Just for the sake of argument lets suppose it had a 1% chance of failing
between 30 days and 1 year even though I would hope it is far less when it
would normally have been covered. Assume you remedy the issue by replacing it
out of pocket.

Expected cost is 0.99 * 100 + 0.01 * 200 = $101

Also keep in mind that brands pay for warranty services out of profits earned
from higher margin sectors and volume neither of which is applicable here.

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Maha-pudma
I didn't expect my comment to be popular, and it's probably going to decimate
the measley 7 points I've accrued (I had 9 prior) as might this one, but I
tend not to buy anything without a decent warranty. I'm certainly not buying
anything that could go wrong after 30 days without any recourse other than
paying to get it fixed or to buy a new one. My view about warranties are to do
with the confidence the seller/manufacturer has in their product, this one
doesn't endear my confidence in the product. Just my opinion but I keep holo
of my electronics as long as I can. Still using a phone bought 4 years ago,
laptop 8 years ago and a desktop I built 10 years ago.

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michaelmrose
Complaining about down votes usually attracts you guessed it... more down
votes.

I didn't down vote either your prior post or this one. I value durable things.
My 8ish year old desktop just died. Both my phone and my laptop are 5 years
old. On the other hand I see the value in cheap things that will be affordable
to all made by small distributors that value our freedom to use our devices.
Everything in life is some degree of trade off and I see room for this one.

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Maha-pudma
Im not complaining, I'm expecting it; and I'm not fussed either, I don't care
about internet points. Down vote away it bothers me not.

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rewsiffer
Wow, I was ready to pull the trigger on this until I saw the $30 shipping.

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ocdtrekkie
They don't subsidize anything here, so yeah, cost of shipping is really the
cost to take a box from China to your house, pretty much. FWIW, when I got my
PineBook Pro, DHL was literally like overnight from Hong Kong to the US. I
think if you consider it part of the cost ($150 for tablet and keyboard
shipped), it's still a pretty good deal.

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rewsiffer
Yeah, good point. Maybe I am just conditioned to subsidized free shipping from
China.

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renewiltord
That's going to end. The UPU agreed to let the US charge 70% of its domestic
shipping cost to foreign carriers.

