An Analysis of my Pinebook Pro Hardware

When I awoke one day, the laptop which I used for accessing the Internet would no longer turn on.  I
eventually purchased a Pinebook Pro to replace it, and have had it for over two years as of writing.

This analysis will have no photographs, at least for now, because it's currently inconvenient to me.

The Pinebook Pro has provided a wonderful education in how not to design a computer system, not that
I wasn't already well educated in this respect, and I wholly regret purchasing it.  In brief, it's a
disgusting waste of two hundred dollars, and those who had the gall to sell it to me should be shot.

This analysis will be incomplete indefinitely, as I've far too much disgust to note at any one time.

The first bit of fun post the first boot was a call to download several gigabytes of program updates
before I could install any program that mattered to me; even after the system broke itself and could
no longer install any program, it would still periodically waste my precious Internet bandwidth with
its worthless probing for more updates.  This is worsened by the lack of alternative system software
for the laptop, as it's unlike other systems, and its storage boot order is bad for experimentation.

The camera may be disabled as a hardware mechanism, but only a fool would trust that.  I've had tape
on it always in addition to the mechanism.  A hardware shutter would've been a much better solution.

My primary machine is an IBM ThinkPad without a working fan, and thus a machine without a fan at all
was what I wanted; the IBM ThinkPad has proven more reliable, and works for years without fail while
the Pinebook Pro could only reach a month of continuous usage at its very best, which slowly fell to
weeks, days, and finally hours before it refused to boot at all.  I've never beforehand, in my life,
used a machine so unreliable, so utterly worthless.  It never worked worth a fuck, even before this.

Purely on the software side, the system software slowly committed suicide.  I could never divine why
it would sometimes put the monitor to sleep or not.  Sometimes I would boot into an environment that
simply didn't work, and would need to reboot immediately.  Slowly, aspects of the environment failed
to work, and I would need to make do without them.  The headphones must be unplugged between reboots
or the built-in speakers will still produce sound as well.  I never could figure out how to have the
system check its filesystem for corruption, which is particularly bad considering how often it would
lock up and require a hard reboot.  During the one time I made the mistake of trying to move most of
my work to the machine, that one time I installed a program I'd made, on my supposedly Free Software
laptop, the filesystem corrupted itself so horribly I couldn't reinstall it but could still continue
to otherwise use it; I didn't make the mistake of trying to use it for real work again.  Eventually,
I began to use the machine solely for the Internet, and nothing else, just as I did its predecessor.

Were it not for my chosen programs being able to cope with sudden failure, I never could've used it.

I've seen graphical flaws on this machine I've yet to see anywhere else; it's entirely unacceptable.
The machine would regularly botch its display like a digital television and an extremely bad signal.
The text rendering would botch random characters, for no reason, sometimes across the entire system.

The machine can be slow to react to basic input.  One time, memory exhaustion killed the environment
rather than the similarly worthless WWW browser causing the exhaustion.  Its keyboard and mouse both
are bad, and I rarely used them.  The screen is unpleasant, compared to the external monitor I have.
The machine never could remember several important settings, requiring me to remind it at each boot,
which is tolerable when a boot happens once a year or so and completely intolerable more frequently.

Still, I was prepared to offer a cold suggestion since, after all, no good laptops are available for
purchase, but then the machine sunk to new lows, and I can't recommend anyone buy it for any reason.
I wanted to write ``With software failures like these, who needs hardware failures?'' but now can't.

When I awoke one day, the laptop which I used for accessing the Internet would no longer turn on.  I
eventually realized the battery had failed, and used the battery bypass cables to power it from only
its charging cord, and the machine has become so unreliable that I'd rather it had destroyed itself.

I found that, by repeatedly turning on the machine, it would eventually stay on for short periods; I
figure I've wasted a few dozen hours by now, babysitting the damned thing while doing other tasks; I
felt nothing but disgust the entire time, especially once doing even this would fail to have it turn
and stay on.  This is so peculiar, I've never heard of it happening to anyone else with any machine.

I've recently inherited an Apple iPad from a deceased relative and, while I still notice some flaws,
it made me realize how much indoctrination it takes for a man to put up with this shit.  It takes so
many years of learning about software freedom to tolerate this unacceptable shit; the only reason my
primary machine isn't used for the Internet is due to the particular system software lacking drivers
for its wireless hardware, and I'd purchased wireless hardware supported by Free Software drivers to
watch that hardware never work worth a fuck and fail too, years ago.  None of this works.  It amazes
me how hardware is made by real businesses, since selling obviously broken hardware is still illegal
to a point, but even those businesses turn around to let any fucking idiot make the system software.

I never trusted the Pinebook Pro, since I never installed on it system software that wasn't default,
and it occurred to me the Apple iPad is in roughly the same category, then.  It couldn't possibly be
better than a proprietary system if I can't trust it anyhow.  At that point, the supposed freedom is
irrelevant, since I can't effectively exercise it.  I should've bought another IBM ThinkPad instead.

The forum for Pinebook Pro users is littered with similar experiences, and so little in way of help.
.