10-15-2022, 10:07 PM
After playing with it for a month or so, pretty seriously, I'm a little surprised at the number of people on YouTube doing unboxings and reactions and describing the PBP as a "fully Open-Source Chromebook". Frankly, that's the wrong answer and anyone that goes into the PBP with that expectation is going to be disappointed. To me, it's much more the 64-bit Raspberry Pi laptop that I've always wanted. I suspect that Pine could make a mint if they'd design and start selling a USB-based 40-pin GPIO header.
For me, the big reason that I bought one was that my professional skills were getting a bit stale and I think that IoT-style devices are where my business will be going in the future. That, plus the fact that I haven't done any real OS-level programming since college (in the early '90's, so we only had 4 instructions back then), made me want to grab a Pi. The problem was that the Pi was not self-supporting. You have to have a KVM interface for it, whereas the PBP has everything that you need to write code. And you can take it with you.
I love the thing, and can't wait to buy a RISC-V based PBP.
CC
For me, the big reason that I bought one was that my professional skills were getting a bit stale and I think that IoT-style devices are where my business will be going in the future. That, plus the fact that I haven't done any real OS-level programming since college (in the early '90's, so we only had 4 instructions back then), made me want to grab a Pi. The problem was that the Pi was not self-supporting. You have to have a KVM interface for it, whereas the PBP has everything that you need to write code. And you can take it with you.
I love the thing, and can't wait to buy a RISC-V based PBP.
CC
