Title:  Pinebook Pro
Date:  20200620
Tags:  computers
========================================

I picked up a Pinebook Pro[0] which, if you're not familiar, is a $200 ARM-based
laptop that aims to be open and hackable.  Mine just arrived a couple days ago.

I was going to do a first impression review, mostly just to have something to
write about, but eh.  I didn't like how it came out and there is really nothing
for me to say that hasn't been said by others.

I'll sum up.  It's worth the price.  It's not going to compete with a laptop
costing 5 times as much on heavy work loads, but it's a good "side kick" system
for some quick work or for travel where you might not want to risk a more
expensive machine.  It can handle high quality YouTube video in the browser or
with local playback and that's really the most demanding use case I need.

I will say that the battery charger is shockingly slow.  Anything more than
light use while plugged in, will drain the battery.  I've never seen that
before.

Pine64, makers of the Pinebook Pro and other products, encourage community
hacking and host a forum and wiki to support user experimentation.  That's
always something I like to support.

I'm planning to trying OpenBSD on it, though some hardware support is still
lacking.  Namely acceleration in X so that will probably kill video playback.


[0] https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/