I decied it was time I posted my thoughts on the PBP. Mine must have come from the first couple pallets - I was notified by DHL It shipped on the May 26th, and it was on my doorstep in Ottawa, Canada by the afternoon of the May 28th! I haven't had many dealings with DHL, so it was interesting to see how quickly they got my package from Hong Kong to Ottawa in that short time. The routing was Hong Kong -> Cincinnati -> Montreal -> Ottawa.
As I see others have commented, there were some additional costs. I will say, not unexpected based on past experience. The US$199.99 plus US$33 shipping converted to C$345.95 on my credit card. The DHL invoice for customs and taxes was C$61. So, the final cost on my doorstep was C$406.95. If I'd expected that initially, I might have been a bit less impulsive with my purchase.
I was surprised to read about the quality issues with the first batch in the June update from Lukasz. My unit is without any defects or issues as far as I can tell.
While I waited for by PBP to arrive, I experimented with different flavours of Manajro on my "spare" x86_64 desktop system. My main desktop (a Ryzen 5 3600X) has been running Ubuntu since it was new. I have not explored other distros for some time. I started with Manjaro KDE, knowing that this was what the PBP would arrivwe with. I had no issue wiith Manjaro per se. But I do have a very specific issue with any KDE-based distro (I've now tried a couple) - it's handling of network shares. I expect to be able to find a network share in the OS's file explorer, mount it, and have it behave like a mounted file system in any app I happen run. This is the case with any distro that has GVFS-based file handling (Gnome, XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon, etc). But not KDE, which doesn't mount file systems in a place that any non-KDE app will be able to find them. As I've played with different distros, I have a very simple test - get Samba configured, browse to my music share on my NAS and drag some music into Audacious. Always works, except if you are using a KDE-based distro. There are some solutions to this problem - utilities like smb4K and Gigolo. For the life of me, I cannot get smb4k working on any architecture, x86_64 or ARM. I did get Gigolo working on Intel Manjaro KDE and that would have been acceptable. But Gigolo has not been compiled for ARM and smb4k is just as dysfunctional on ARM as it is on Intel. So, I was pretty certain my path would be to XFCE on the Pinebook, and afer one last attempt to make smb4k work, I proceeded to install Manjaro XFCE, which has been problem free for me so far.
The process of getting Manjaro XFCE installed on the internal eMMC drive on the PBP was not problem-free, but I think the problems were not with the PBP. I created a bootable copy of Manjaro XFCE on my old 2012 MacBook Pro, under Linux Mint. The first attempt did not produce a bootable drive. This was a brand new microSD card, so I decided to try deleting it's partitions and creating a new ext4 partition. I don't know why, but this allowed me to create a bootable microSD card with Manajro XFCE on it. I played with it a bit just to make sure there were no issues with Manjaro XFCE on the PBP. None that I could see.
Creating the eMMC installer microSD was more problematic. I created sevceral images on the Macbook that would not boot, but failed in different ways. I stumbled on a post my someone who cleaerly had no trouble creating bootable intstallers, but they were doing it ON THE PBP! So, I decided to try that - I downloaded the image on the PBP and wrote it to the microSD card on the PBP. This gave me an eMMC installer that worked perfectly. From then, my PBP has been running Manajro XFCE and I have no complaints, as far as software is concerned.
There are really two issues I have with the PBP hardware. The first is, I think, the elephant in the room - this is an an extremely slow computer. My 2012 Macbook Pro totally smokes it. If I had to pick one of them as my only computer, it's no contest, it would be the 2012 Macbook. So, be warned, this is a device that is not up to the mark set my Intel 8 years ago.
The other negative may be equally difficult, depending. I find the trackpad pretty horrible. I'm a person who happily uses a good trackpad. Again, referring to the 2012 Macbook, I would never consider an external mouse with it. With the PBP, I've concluded it's only enjoyable to use with an external mouse.
Otherwise, I'm impressed with the hardware. The screen looks fine to my eyes. It was a struggle to get everything sized reasonably. This is a software issue. On the Macbook (with it's Retina display) Unbuntu and Mint looked great without adjustment. Manjaro is not compensating for high res displays like Ubuntu and it's derivatives. And that's right from the beginning, with the installer presenting at a reasonable size for the screen resolution.
I find the keyboard quite decent. The only typing issue I've had came from accidentally touching the touchpad which scoots the cursor off to somewhere I don't intend to type. Battery life seems good, which I think is the upside of the unimpressive performance. I was surprised to read that others had trouble witrh the WiFi. For me it's been fine. And that included downloading the eMMC installer image as previously mentioned.
Getting back to performance, I tried streaming some Youtube videos and the best it can seem to handle is 320p. If I tried to force that to 1080, it couldn't play smoothly. I wondered if this was WiFI related, so I decied to buy a USB-3 dongle with an Ethernet port . Wired ethernet did not improve streaming at all.
So, to conclude, I have to put a rather blunt point on this - if someone offered me C$406 right now, I'd sell the PBP. The old 2012 Macbook is going to die eventually, but it will be replaced with something that performs at least as well as it did.
As I see others have commented, there were some additional costs. I will say, not unexpected based on past experience. The US$199.99 plus US$33 shipping converted to C$345.95 on my credit card. The DHL invoice for customs and taxes was C$61. So, the final cost on my doorstep was C$406.95. If I'd expected that initially, I might have been a bit less impulsive with my purchase.
I was surprised to read about the quality issues with the first batch in the June update from Lukasz. My unit is without any defects or issues as far as I can tell.
While I waited for by PBP to arrive, I experimented with different flavours of Manajro on my "spare" x86_64 desktop system. My main desktop (a Ryzen 5 3600X) has been running Ubuntu since it was new. I have not explored other distros for some time. I started with Manjaro KDE, knowing that this was what the PBP would arrivwe with. I had no issue wiith Manjaro per se. But I do have a very specific issue with any KDE-based distro (I've now tried a couple) - it's handling of network shares. I expect to be able to find a network share in the OS's file explorer, mount it, and have it behave like a mounted file system in any app I happen run. This is the case with any distro that has GVFS-based file handling (Gnome, XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon, etc). But not KDE, which doesn't mount file systems in a place that any non-KDE app will be able to find them. As I've played with different distros, I have a very simple test - get Samba configured, browse to my music share on my NAS and drag some music into Audacious. Always works, except if you are using a KDE-based distro. There are some solutions to this problem - utilities like smb4K and Gigolo. For the life of me, I cannot get smb4k working on any architecture, x86_64 or ARM. I did get Gigolo working on Intel Manjaro KDE and that would have been acceptable. But Gigolo has not been compiled for ARM and smb4k is just as dysfunctional on ARM as it is on Intel. So, I was pretty certain my path would be to XFCE on the Pinebook, and afer one last attempt to make smb4k work, I proceeded to install Manjaro XFCE, which has been problem free for me so far.
The process of getting Manjaro XFCE installed on the internal eMMC drive on the PBP was not problem-free, but I think the problems were not with the PBP. I created a bootable copy of Manjaro XFCE on my old 2012 MacBook Pro, under Linux Mint. The first attempt did not produce a bootable drive. This was a brand new microSD card, so I decided to try deleting it's partitions and creating a new ext4 partition. I don't know why, but this allowed me to create a bootable microSD card with Manajro XFCE on it. I played with it a bit just to make sure there were no issues with Manjaro XFCE on the PBP. None that I could see.
Creating the eMMC installer microSD was more problematic. I created sevceral images on the Macbook that would not boot, but failed in different ways. I stumbled on a post my someone who cleaerly had no trouble creating bootable intstallers, but they were doing it ON THE PBP! So, I decided to try that - I downloaded the image on the PBP and wrote it to the microSD card on the PBP. This gave me an eMMC installer that worked perfectly. From then, my PBP has been running Manajro XFCE and I have no complaints, as far as software is concerned.
There are really two issues I have with the PBP hardware. The first is, I think, the elephant in the room - this is an an extremely slow computer. My 2012 Macbook Pro totally smokes it. If I had to pick one of them as my only computer, it's no contest, it would be the 2012 Macbook. So, be warned, this is a device that is not up to the mark set my Intel 8 years ago.
The other negative may be equally difficult, depending. I find the trackpad pretty horrible. I'm a person who happily uses a good trackpad. Again, referring to the 2012 Macbook, I would never consider an external mouse with it. With the PBP, I've concluded it's only enjoyable to use with an external mouse.
Otherwise, I'm impressed with the hardware. The screen looks fine to my eyes. It was a struggle to get everything sized reasonably. This is a software issue. On the Macbook (with it's Retina display) Unbuntu and Mint looked great without adjustment. Manjaro is not compensating for high res displays like Ubuntu and it's derivatives. And that's right from the beginning, with the installer presenting at a reasonable size for the screen resolution.
I find the keyboard quite decent. The only typing issue I've had came from accidentally touching the touchpad which scoots the cursor off to somewhere I don't intend to type. Battery life seems good, which I think is the upside of the unimpressive performance. I was surprised to read that others had trouble witrh the WiFi. For me it's been fine. And that included downloading the eMMC installer image as previously mentioned.
Getting back to performance, I tried streaming some Youtube videos and the best it can seem to handle is 320p. If I tried to force that to 1080, it couldn't play smoothly. I wondered if this was WiFI related, so I decied to buy a USB-3 dongle with an Ethernet port . Wired ethernet did not improve streaming at all.
So, to conclude, I have to put a rather blunt point on this - if someone offered me C$406 right now, I'd sell the PBP. The old 2012 Macbook is going to die eventually, but it will be replaced with something that performs at least as well as it did.