Pine64 storage

[baylf2000]

Please tell me this isn't yet ANOTHER potentially brilliant ARM board that has been horribly disabled by the incredible short sightedness of it's developers in not including some kind of fast storage.

SD cards make absolutely awful hard drives, no matter how fast they are rated. And USB 2.0 is also an incredibly slow method for accessing hard drives of any sort.

So you end up with a fantastic processor with great potential but a horrible user experience because the fast processor is hobbled by stupidly slow storage.

I just don't understand why board developers keep doing this over and over and over again??

...presumably because these boards aren't meant to be drop in PC replacements, but intended for IoT applications or dedicated machines for particular sets of tasks and so aren't geared towards that design principle???  Locally accessed files are generally assumed to be multimedia, which don't need fast access; all other content is generally assumed to come from network resources / cloud / internet, and so *that* is where attention is focused instead.

These are not intended to be high end production ready components for third party commercial supercomputer development and rendering farms; these are cheap fun hobbyist playgrounds or DIY alternative components for far more expensive systems like computing clusters.  Once the OS and/or app components are loaded into RAM they're generally expected to stay there unless explicitly given the boot, and so the longer load time is thus considered an acceptable trade off in terms of power consumption, components, heat, etc - optimization for rapid task, app and data switching is for full PCs or more specialized (ie, expensive) hardware.

This is the exact model that drives the entire cell phone and tablet market, so it can't be utterly crazy pants.  I would suggest it's your expectations that are out of sync here, not the product; you are looking for apples in the oranges bin at the grocery.

Ummm, have you even read the kickstarter campaign?

"PINE A64 is not only a computer, it is a super affordable 64-bit high performance expandable single board computer (SBC).  Whether you are an IT professional, electronics hobbyist, student, teacher, hacker, inventor, or just someone who wants to have more flexibility to increase their productivity at work, the PINE A64 is a computer board made for everyone.  Enjoy more fun and entertainment at home with endless possibilities."

And as far as your assertion that "this is the exact model that drives the entire cell phone and tablet market".... also dead wrong. Most phones and tablets run their OS from an eMMC module, not an SD card.

So maybe my expectations are not only sane, but completely in-sync with the way the creators have positioned their product.