+- PINE64 (https://forum.pine64.org)
+-- Forum: Pinebook Pro (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=111)
+--- Forum: General Discussion on Pinebook Pro (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=112)
+--- Thread: Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions (/showthread.php?tid=8024)
RE: Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions - jsfrederick - 11-02-2019
Received my shipment on the 31st! Finally got a chance to unbox today. Overall, a nice piece of equipment. Heavier than I expected, but not too heavy by any means. Was able to run the update script (by clicking on the icon in the system tray) and got the latest version of Mr. FixIT's desktop OS. Started checking out the features of the OS and all is as to be expected. (A BIG thanks to Mr. FixIT for building a solid OS experience).
My only real complaint is with the touch pad. It is a little slow to respond. i did see that it's a known issue and should be fixed soon. It does seem to bit difficult to click and feels quite "knotch-y" Going to give it some time and see if I get used to it.
My only mistake was not ordering the NVMe adapter with the Pinebook Pro itself. I did order one in a separate order and got it a couple of weeks ago. Not sure yet if it's the Fixed one or not. Will dig it out tomorrow and send some screen shots to see if its the new one that I can install. If it's not, do we have an ETA on the parts needed to fix it yet?
On that note, is there any known good M2.NVMe SSD's? I want something, maybe 256Gb's, for storage.
RE: Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions - GLSRacer - 11-02-2019
So I've used the Pinebook Pro for about 6 hours now and I have generally enjoyed the experience. When I received the unit it would not turn on. After removing the back cover I noticed that the eMMC was not secured, I was able to get the unit to boot after securing the eMMC and pressing the reset button nearby.
Like others, I encountered a few issues but only one that is really a nuisance. The main nuisance being an issue with sound in the browser. I have disabled the HDMI sound output but still get issues with sound in YouTube videos. Sometimes that sound will play, sometimes it won't. Playing with pulse audio sometimes restores sound. The intermittent sound issues seem to occur more often with Firefox which is a shame because it seems to play video better than Chromium especially once the Iridium YouTube extension is installed. That brings me to the next issue, the PBP will not play 1080p60 content smoothly (seems to be a known issue) but does play 720p60 content with some screen tearing effects, almost like the screen refresh rate is ~45 FPSish instead of 60 FPS. The Iridium extension allows you to play most videos at 30 FPS which helps a lot. The size, weight, and excellent battery life make the PBP a great option for watching YouTube. Hopefully the sound issues can be worked out in the future.
Main Positives:
-Excellent build quality
-Super slim and light weight
-Great battery life
-Decent screen for the money
-Nice feeling keyboard, layout is a bit strange at first
Overall this is an excellent first effort and I can tell that a lot of work has been done by the development team to make the laptop very usable out of the box. The Pinebook Pro is excellent value and I think the experience will only get better with time.
RE: Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions - jpakkane - 11-03-2019
A couple of security related points:
The default Debian image has an openssh server installed. If don't need to SSH in the machine, you probably should uninstall (purge) that. Especially since the default username/password combination is known.
Encrypted home directories can not be used since the ecryptfs kernel module is not on the image.
RE: Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions - mspohr - 11-03-2019
I've used it for a few days now and I really like it. I've managed to set it up pretty well. The few awkward issues seem to have been resolved. I'm adjusting to the keyboard spacing and my Logitech Bluetooth mouse is working well. I like the feel of the keyboard. Better than my Mac or my Logitech keyboards (and of course much improved over the original Pinebook keyboard.) The case is beautiful and the high resolution screen is great.
The system is very responsive. I don't put many compute intensive tasks so everything works well. Video and sound are great.
I am using the USB C for charging and now at 100% charge steady state it seems to use about 5 watts power. Battery life is easily 10+ hours.
The MicroUSB card slot works well if you push it until it clicks. If you don't have long fingernails, you'll need to use a paperclip. (All my other computers with this type of slot work the same... it's just that the card is small. It rather have this recessed slot than run the risk of the card extending from the case and accidentally being ejected.)
I can easily see this being my main utility computer. I've ordered a USB C to video hub and we'll see how that works.
RE: Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions - pasila9999 - 11-03-2019
Some experiences from here as well:
Having used the device for a weekend now, I'm pretty happy with the experience so far. I feel this is a great start and once developments get going, the only way is up! I'll list some observations that I've had so far with regular usage:
Screen: Delivers what promises. Love the narrow bezels. Can get bright enough and especially dim enough for night time use. However, some colours seem a bit off and need adjusting, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that yet.
Touchpad: Nice size, I like the kind-of-coarse feeling of the surface. Also experiencing the same issue than other users, the tracking is not that precise.
Keyboard: Love it. Love the layout (thanks!!) and the feel. My only concern is the noise it makes - or the chassis - when typing.
Speakers: They're okay and once again deliver what they're needed for (like: watching youtube videos).
Webcam: It's enough for a quick video call, but the image quality is bare minimum.
I have a Dell WD15 USB-C dock that should work (external display and Ethernet) but I couldn't get it to done anything else than charge the Pinebook.
I am impressed - Kicou - 11-04-2019
I received the PBP on November 1st and had the whole weekend to play with it and had a good initial feel for it.
- The case is great, I stuck a vinyl Tux penguin in the middle of the top cover because I will be using Linux on this system
- LCD display is good, better than I expected. It is matte and bright. Good resolution and no dead pixels. Looks much more expensive than it really is. Hinges feel sturdy. The lower left part of the LCD front bezel seems to have a broken clip or something, but you could not tell unless you actually squeeze it, at which point you can feel some play and hear a faint click. I don't expect it to be a problem, there is no force applied to this area.
- Keyboard: good. Good mechanical feel, maybe a bit on the noisy side. Engraving is for UK layout but I use US. No big deal, I touch-type.
- Sound: OK. Don't expect deep bass. Don't expect bass at all. But I would say it is adequate. There is a faint hissing noise when the OS activates sound, but it stops when sound has finished playing. It can be heard when using the laptop in a quiet environment, because since there is no fan there is no white noise to cover it. No problem with BT audio. I have set the 3.5 mm jack to UART mode, so I haven't tested wired headphones.
- Touchpad: nice size and texture. Click switches on bottom left and right are a bit loud but I usually tap to click. I set acceleration to the max, otherwise it feels a bit unresponsive. Two annoyances: 1. if your palm is in contact with the touchpad, the keyboard doesn't register key presses, which can lead to missed keystrokes depending on how you hold your hands while typing. 2. there seems to be some strange delay when trying to make fine pointer movements. You can disable the touchpad with Fn-7 and use an external mouse (which works perfectly) to fully enjoy the good keyboard
- Battery: after 3 cycles of full charge-discharge, I can confidently say that the battery will last for a full work day. 8 hours for sure. 10 hours maybe, depending on load
- Video playback in Full 1080p: nothing to complain about, it plays well. Transition between windowed and fullscreen has a 2-second delay but nothing horrible. Tried Youtube and Netflix. The bottom of the chassis feels warm when playing videos, but nothing alarming.
- I installed the NVMe adapter in the case. I have a feeling I don't have the newest version as the ribbon cables requires some twisting to connect, but it connects. No issues with touchpad clicking, but I don't have an SSD drive installed yet. I will probably grab a cheap one today to test further. Hopefully it won't affect battery life too much
- I was able to test the serial console to troubleshoot a boot issue when I flashed a non-working image. Had to set connection parameters to 1500000 8N1 (what got me initially was the unusual 1500000 speed). Serial connection is unstable if only on battery. It is fine when power is plugged in
OS: I tried the Debian Stretch with MATE that comes pre-installed. The desktop environment feels a bit sluggish and Firefox keeps crashing. Other than that it works fine. I had issues establishing an OpenVPN tunnel with NetworkManager. Not sure if it is my config file or an OS issue, but I didn't investigate.
I switched to Ayufan's Bionic Mate 0.9.16 (yes, I know, it is a pre-release, but at this point I consider everything pre-release on the PBP
). It is glorious.After a bit of tweaking the environment, which I always do no matter the hardware I am on, I have a working desktop environment that I could use as a daily driver.
It feels weird to go back to a classic Gnome look and feel, but it looks good and functional. This OS image feels much more responsive than the stock one. I could definitely use for a whole work day when no heavy tasks are required.
- OpenVPN tunnels worked without a problem
- I found a build of VSCode for armhf that works (Code-OSS 1.29.0-1539702)
- remmina RDP works great if I use a freerdp video mode that doesn't require h.264
- couldn't get the SPICE console to work through virt-manager; I haven't investigated why, I don't have an immediate need for it
- Aisleriot works out of the box. No issues whatsoever (I tested it because I read it could be a problem)
- Firefox is solid. Never crashed on me. Did some bookkeeping and invoicing using Quickbooks Online, email with Zimbra web, general web surfing: no issues.
- Netflix requires extracting widevine module from a Chromium-OS image (there are scripts available for that). Will only work with Chromium browser
- I have to launch Chromium binary (not the shell script) from terminal if I want to access the settings menu
it as my main desktop
- Connecting to Matrix using pidgin and purple-matrix
- LibreOffice works. Looks ugly until you install the package libreoffice-gtk2.
This being an Ubuntu distro, I expect to find most of the packages I need. I will hit the occasional third-party software that does not have armhf binaries, but nothing I cannot live without.
My initial impression is that I can use this machine as my main work machine when on the go.
For a USD $199 laptop, I am impressed.
RE: Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions - m80 - 11-04-2019
I got my Pinebook Pro on Oct 31 and so far so good. I've had a few hiccups, but nothing I couldn't sort out, and I'm really enjoying the machine so far. I can't wait until there's a KDE Neon image for it!
Sadly Firefox crashes on me so often I'm find it unusable... but I'm sure that will be fixed in time
Matthew
RE: Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions - MrTester - 11-04-2019
(11-04-2019, 09:59 AM)m80 Wrote: I got my Pinebook Pro on Oct 31 and so far so good. I've had a few hiccups, but nothing I couldn't sort out, and I'm really enjoying the machine so far. I can't wait until there's a KDE Neon image for it!
Sadly Firefox crashes on me so often I'm find it unusable... but I'm sure that will be fixed in time
Matthew
Please review update recommendations, Firefox stability issues are fixed in updates.
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=7830
Glad to see your feedback.
RE: Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions - jpakkane - 11-04-2019
You should consider installing apps such as Gimp and Libreoffice with Flatpak via Flathub rather than using distro packages. This makes, for example, theming work out of the box in Libreoffice. The only downside is that some packages require a newer Flatpak version than the one that ships with Debian Stretch.
RE: Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions - nearsky - 11-04-2019
Received mine today my initial impression was “wow, this thing is gorgeous” - guys, great job on the build quality!
I’ll have more time to play around with it later this week.