10-24-2019, 12:03 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-24-2019, 03:22 PM by tsago.
Edit Reason: added the positive note about the touchpad
)
Haiyoooo,
Typing this from my new Pinebook Pro and all that jazz...
Impressions
The good- - Looks and feels super sexy!
- - Pretty chirpy fast boot up, I like it!
- - Love the workflow for testing new OS images: Write to SD, plug it in, reboot, done!
- - Battery speed seems pretty good. I picked it up on Tuesday, let it livestream a youtube video for a few hours, and I'm only just recharging for the first time
- - I like the physical feel of the touchpad. Delicious!
The nitpicky/neutral- - I feel like I have to ram micro-SD cards uncomfortably deep before the locking mechanism "bites" into the card (glad to have some nails!)
- - The bottom panel is ass to place back in after opening it. Especially the sides around the ports are a very tight fit. It's not sitting 100% flush with the side corners of the chassis in there (maybe I need to screw in the mid-side screw in harder?). I also see a bit of a denting around that place on one side, makes me wonder if perhaps the assembly people are having a hard time putting it in as well? (disclaimer: I only noticed this after looking inside, so there's a chance this might be my own doing)
- - There are also two completely loose tiny stand-off plastic pieces for the top/right left corner (near the screen) screws. I almost lost them when opening the back. We should probably put a warning about this in the disassembly guide. edit: ignore, already documented here
- - I was a bit surprised by the "shallowness" of the path the screen can take before it hits the end when opening. It will take some getting used to, coming from a Dell which can extend its screen to the point of being perfectly horizontal with the main-body part.
- - The screen when closed doesn't firmly stick to the main body. Makes me worry a bit that I'll be more likely to jam stuff in-between (probably irrational). It would be nice if the next iteration included some magnets, or some other way to "fasten" the screen to the body a bit more.
- - Using a newly created user account drops you into into a fugly default theme. Would be nice if rock's theme was the system default. (or maybe let's collect guidelines on how to recreate rock's profile for arbitrary new users? I don't like using default accounts
 )
- - The touchpad is drunk. When I'm trying to snipe a few pixels aside (or a few letters in a text), there seems to be an initial "dead zone" where the touchpad ignores my finger. Similarly when I stop from a slow movement, there seems to be a bit of leftover momentum before the mouse stops moving. This makes it feel like the mouse is trailing/lagging behind me.
The bad- - Left-CTRL+left-SHIFT+TAB key combination does not work (used e.g. to jump to the previous tab in browser). This is driving me absolutely insane. Note that if either of the left CTRL or SHIFT is replaced by its right-side version, this combination works. right-CTRL+right-SHIFT+TAB also work. I have also tested this with the Chromium OS buid linked in the wiki; same behaviour, so not limited to the factory-provided Debian.
edit2: bonus head-scratcher - In Chromium, the "chrome://settings" tab keeps crashing within a second of fully loading. (was fun trying to sync my profile like this to get my password for the forum) The version is 72, so perhaps a newer one will fix it (78 seems to be the latest)?
10-24-2019, 02:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-24-2019, 02:13 PM by fretinator.)
Pro Tip - I found the way to get to the Chrome Settings page is to reboot (makes sure Chromium is really out of memory). Now open a command-line and type chromium-browser. You can then go to the settings page.
The settings page isn't working I assume because of something in the command-line below.
chromium-browser --disk-cache-size=2147483648 --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS armv7l 6946.63.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3626.121 Safari/537.36"
(10-24-2019, 02:09 PM)fretinator Wrote: Pro Tip - I found the way to get to the Chrome Settings page is to reboot (makes sure Chromium is really out of memory). Now open a command-line and type chromium-browser. You can then go to the settings page.
The settings page isn't working I assume because of something in the command-line below.
chromium-browser --disk-cache-size=2147483648 --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS armv7l 6946.63.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3626.121 Safari/537.36"
p.s. - In my case I needed to get to the settings page to turn of the Chrome desktop notifications. They would pop-up but not have a close button nor close on their own. I would open Chrome and half of my screen would be filled with permanent notifications. the only way to close them was to click them, which caused tabs to get opened and sometimes sound to start playing (notification from Youtube). I just turned off desktop notifications from Chrome.
Printer Setup using an HP Envy-5530...
Turns out this was quite an adventure!!
Setup was started with HPLIP, then I had to search through Synaptic using "printer" for a search word.
After consulting previous experience, with a large dose of "fingers crossed", I managed to get it up and running. Probably most important was using "root/root" for authorization. "rock" wouldn't give sufficient privileges...
It there's way to get a terminal dump to give more useful info, please let me know how and I'll do! :-)
(10-24-2019, 12:03 PM)tsago Wrote: [*] - The touchpad is drunk. When I'm trying to snipe a few pixels aside (or a few letters in a text), there seems to be an initial "dead zone" where the touchpad ignores my finger. Similarly when I stop from a slow movement, there seems to be a bit of leftover momentum before the mouse stops moving. This makes it feel like the mouse is trailing/lagging behind me.
This is a known issue. The firmware for the touchpad is definitely not up to where we want it. There should be an improved firmware ready to be installed soon.
Community administrator and sysadmin for PINE64
(Translation: If something breaks on the website, forum, or chat network, I'm a good person to yell at about it)
It`s been one week since I received my Pinebook Pro. I`m really impressed by the quality and usability Pine64 delivered with the first batch.
Housing - Looks and feels great.
Display - I love the resolution and the colors and contrast of the IPS panel. It`s pretty bright, too.
Keyboard - It`s perfectly adequate. I still like my Cherry Stream 3.0 better, but that comparison is a little unfair. The layout is fine. I`m already quite accustomed to it (coming from a German layout).
Touchpad - Feels a bit laggy, as already mentioned in previous posts. Also two-finger taps don`t seem to get recognized. As @ fire219 stated, a firmware update is already been worked on.
Battery - After the first full charge I used the PBP on two evenings (roughly 2x 3h), playing around, customizing the OS and streaming music with the Nextcloud web frontend and still had 40% charge left.
OS - It`s already absolutely usable. Compliments to all contributors! Yes, there are some minor issues, but I`m confident they`ll get ironed out soon. That`s the great thing about the community approach.
I really hope this device category is here to stay. A quality device for the open source community. I love it.
That's all music to my 'batch 2' ears!
10-27-2019, 06:14 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-27-2019, 06:19 PM by bcnaz.)
(10-25-2019, 12:36 PM)rick1959 Wrote: Printer Setup using an HP Envy-5530...
Turns out this was quite an adventure!!
Setup was started with HPLIP, then I had to search through Synaptic using "printer" for a search word.
After consulting previous experience, with a large dose of "fingers crossed", I managed to get it up and running. Probably most important was using "root/root" for authorization. "rock" wouldn't give sufficient privileges...
It there's way to get a terminal dump to give more useful info, please let me know how and I'll do! :-)
Rick,
Just curious, Have you possibly tried a usb (or bluetooth) US style keyboard ?
Since I am a hunt and peck type user the keyboard probably will not make much difference...
BUT, I am "Curious"
Will the OS see it as a US keyboard, or just A keyboard .... hmm...?
LINUX = CHOICES
**BCnAZ**
Donate to $upport
your favorite OS Team
(10-27-2019, 06:14 PM)bcnaz Wrote: Will the OS see it as a US keyboard, or just A keyboard .... hmm...?
As there is Linux inside, you could probably choose any keyboard layout you want.
(10-27-2019, 06:14 PM)bcnaz Wrote: (10-25-2019, 12:36 PM)rick1959 Wrote: Printer Setup using an HP Envy-5530...
Turns out this was quite an adventure!!
Setup was started with HPLIP, then I had to search through Synaptic using "printer" for a search word.
After consulting previous experience, with a large dose of "fingers crossed", I managed to get it up and running. Probably most important was using "root/root" for authorization. "rock" wouldn't give sufficient privileges...
It there's way to get a terminal dump to give more useful info, please let me know how and I'll do! :-)
Rick,
Just curious, Have you possibly tried a usb (or bluetooth) US style keyboard ?
Since I am a hunt and peck type user the keyboard probably will not make much difference...
BUT, I am "Curious"
Will the OS see it as a US keyboard, or just A keyboard .... hmm...?
I will try a wireless keyboard in a little while (US) and see what happens. I did notice that when using different programs, which I foolishly didn't keep track of :-(, that it seemed like the keyboard responded with different key characters....Anyone else notice this? :-)
(10-27-2019, 06:14 PM)bcnaz Wrote: (10-25-2019, 12:36 PM)rick1959 Wrote: Printer Setup using an HP Envy-5530...
Turns out this was quite an adventure!!
Setup was started with HPLIP, then I had to search through Synaptic using "printer" for a search word.
After consulting previous experience, with a large dose of "fingers crossed", I managed to get it up and running. Probably most important was using "root/root" for authorization. "rock" wouldn't give sufficient privileges...
It there's way to get a terminal dump to give more useful info, please let me know how and I'll do! :-)
Rick,
Just curious, Have you possibly tried a usb (or bluetooth) US style keyboard ?
Since I am a hunt and peck type user the keyboard probably will not make much difference...
BUT, I am "Curious"
Will the OS see it as a US keyboard, or just A keyboard .... hmm...?
OK, using a Logitech K400r wireless keyboard, I'm typing now. By all accounts, all keys appear to function as a traditional US keyboard.Plugged in the USB dongle and started typing.....After I turned the keyboard on... 
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