Pinebook Pro Initial Impressions

[richfm]

The PBP antenna,  not the router.

I didn't know the PBP had a wifi antenna. If that is not working properly, then I paid for a defective device and want a working replacement.

I tested the wifi reception on my 3 laptops, the PBP running ubuntu mate, an ASUS laptop running ubuntu mate, and a netbook running ubuntu mate. My house is 1 floor, 2 bedroom, wood frame house with plaster walls. I took each laptop from the room with the gateway to the opposite end of the house and noted the wifi signal strength. The ASUS laptop's signal was steady at 65 mb/s in every room. The Toshiba netbook was steady at 52 mb/s in every room. The PBP varied from 72 to 65 mb/s in the room with the gateway down to 6 mb/s in other rooms! This tells me the wifi hardware in the PBP is defective. I've tried several things to improve page loading on the PBP like increasing the CPU speed to maximum and flashing several OSs to MMC. The signal strength so was still too slow.

So far the Pine Info team has been slow to make suggestions and their suggestions (reboot router and install default Debian) have not made any difference.