Discussion of Moving Production Outside of China

[TRS-80]

Thank you KC9UDX for your reasonable, level-headed perspective which seems to be based on first-hand experience.  I personally have had just about enough of the Western legacy corporate media telling their subjects who and what to hate (and most of said subjects lapping it right up without question).  It's all so tiresome.

For instance, mining "rare" earth elements is really a high-cost, dirty process to obtain as is typical in the mining industry.

This is my understanding as well.  And yet look at the throw-away mentality business model of almost all companies nowadays (especially phones).  They want you to just be a good consoomer and buy a new device every X months/years (as their business model dictates) because batteries are not replaceable, and they totally control the locked down ecosystem and extensively modified, frozen in time, ancient Linux kernel your device runs on, etc...

Therefore it is very refreshing that you can get spare parts (including batteries!) for Pine products, as there are very few devices any more where this is still the case.  And the idea of using real, standard GNU/Linux as a platform (as opposed to Google Java VM nightmare knock-off) also only contributes to making long term usage scenarios even more viable (and that's before we've even gotten into the freedom/control aspects, which are yet another bonus).

In other words, the world is not a perfect place, but I think Pine are doing a great job of moving things forward where and how they can, and should be applauded for that.  It is this very realistic approach that I am coming to appreciate about the company more and more.