06-20-2017, 11:25 AM
I was pleased to receive my Pinebook on June 19th. When I got the notification on Friday 16th, DHL were predicting dlivery today 20th, but it came a day earlier.
I tried it out immediately and after a bit of a charge it powered up first time without a problem.
The screen is quite decent (for the price) although it reminded me of my first 'black' macbook where the image looks negative if you get the viewing angle wrong. I have two dead (always lit) pixels on mine on the left edge of the screen.
Keyboard is taking some getting used to - you have to type more assertively than I am used to to get good accuracy. The left shift key is very sticky and needs some extra assertion! I am hoping it improves with a bit of use.
Trackpad is usable but i think needs some refinement/adjustment. If this were windows/mac I am sure you could adjust senstivity more easily but I haven't discovered how to do this in Ubuntu yet. For now I'm using my trusty Logitech cordless mouse. Particularly tricky is the scroll bars in Mate. Two finger scrolling does work but is not very precise.
Battery seems to last very well from a full charge - needs more time to see how it works in practice.
WiFi has been hit and miss. Works fine at home to an Apple Airport Express and to a TP-Link 9980. At work it tried to connect to the guest network but failed each time. 2.4G only, no 5G
I swapped out the power adapter with the 2-pin euro plug for one of the same spec but with a UK plug. I tried charging using the USB to Jack cable I bought as an extra and that worked fine from an iPad charger drawing about 1.4A
I also bought the 64G eMMC which was an easy job to swap when you figure out it lived under a black sticky pad.
Mosty my experience so far is Ubuntu Mate 0.5.5-65 although I did try Android 7.1 from SD Card. Seemed okay running from a fast (Samsung 32G Pro+) card.
I am very pleased so far. Some minor issues here and there, but at this price point I'm not expecting a Linux macbook air!
Plans for the future? Well, I'm hoping to use this when travelling and I dont want to take my Macbook Pro with me. In the meantime it's nice to get back into Linux again and see what's new.
Thanks, Pine!
I tried it out immediately and after a bit of a charge it powered up first time without a problem.
The screen is quite decent (for the price) although it reminded me of my first 'black' macbook where the image looks negative if you get the viewing angle wrong. I have two dead (always lit) pixels on mine on the left edge of the screen.
Keyboard is taking some getting used to - you have to type more assertively than I am used to to get good accuracy. The left shift key is very sticky and needs some extra assertion! I am hoping it improves with a bit of use.
Trackpad is usable but i think needs some refinement/adjustment. If this were windows/mac I am sure you could adjust senstivity more easily but I haven't discovered how to do this in Ubuntu yet. For now I'm using my trusty Logitech cordless mouse. Particularly tricky is the scroll bars in Mate. Two finger scrolling does work but is not very precise.
Battery seems to last very well from a full charge - needs more time to see how it works in practice.
WiFi has been hit and miss. Works fine at home to an Apple Airport Express and to a TP-Link 9980. At work it tried to connect to the guest network but failed each time. 2.4G only, no 5G
I swapped out the power adapter with the 2-pin euro plug for one of the same spec but with a UK plug. I tried charging using the USB to Jack cable I bought as an extra and that worked fine from an iPad charger drawing about 1.4A
I also bought the 64G eMMC which was an easy job to swap when you figure out it lived under a black sticky pad.
Mosty my experience so far is Ubuntu Mate 0.5.5-65 although I did try Android 7.1 from SD Card. Seemed okay running from a fast (Samsung 32G Pro+) card.
I am very pleased so far. Some minor issues here and there, but at this price point I'm not expecting a Linux macbook air!
Plans for the future? Well, I'm hoping to use this when travelling and I dont want to take my Macbook Pro with me. In the meantime it's nice to get back into Linux again and see what's new.
Thanks, Pine!
