Anyone else disappointed?

[damikeh]

Absolutely not, as frewind suggested, this is the start of the journey, it will only get better from here.

Complaining about shipping costs when it was clear from the start is a pointless moan to me, things cost to ship. Just as the Raspi did when that started - I remember people complaining about a $30 SBC that costs $50 once you add shipping, SD card, power supply etc and it was false advertising! Please. Get over yourself.

It seems the people that whine are mostly complaining due to one of the following reasons;

• Not understanding that a decent PSU is required. No not that blackberry charger you've had since 2001. No not that IQ smart charger that charges 5 phones at once. 
  
• Following the instructions given out by people on how to flash the images onto decent SD cards, along with the requirements there. For example, dont flash the Android or the RemixOS onto a 2GB card then moan when it cant start.
  
• Basic Linux knowledge gaps, same happened on the Pi
  

My only (very minor gripe!) is that there are no real nice enclosures for it yet, so i'm running mine "naked". But again, the SAME THING happened with my 256mb pi all those moons ago. 

Time will heal all this stuff. 
Relax. 

dm

[rahlquist]

My only (very minor gripe!) is that there are no real nice enclosures for it yet, so i'm running mine "naked". But again, the SAME THING happened with my 256mb pi all those moons ago. 

Pssst I have one of these coming tomorrow http://www.amazon.com/Acrylic-Enclosure-...B01CR1AH5M seems decent enough, made by a fella on here. http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=299

[damikeh]

My only (very minor gripe!) is that there are no real nice enclosures for it yet, so i'm running mine "naked". But again, the SAME THING happened with my 256mb pi all those moons ago. 

Pssst I have one of these coming tomorrow http://www.amazon.com/Acrylic-Enclosure-...B01CR1AH5M seems decent enough, made by a fella on here. http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=299

Heh i saw it, and some others on here (made of wood etc) but they don't seem to ship to the UK.
I'm happy to wait a while, i'm in no rush. Nice try though!

[Keex]

As a makeshift enclosure I just used a sharp knife to cut fitting holes (for the usb/ethernet/HDMI ports) into the sides of the paper box the PINE came in and strengthened the edges with some tape. Works quite well and looks suprisingly decent.

[damikeh]

As a makeshift enclosure I just used a sharp knife to cut fitting holes (for the usb/ethernet/HDMI ports) into the sides of the paper box the PINE came in and strengthened the edges with some tape. Works quite well and looks suprisingly decent.

Hey Keex, thats exactly wot i plan to do tomorrow! haha. 
Just need to find some tiny screws/nuts so i can secure it...

Great minds eh 

dm

[xmasone]

I have bought 4 PI 3's and I am happy with them. I agree lack of 1G networking and being limited to 1G memory is putting a cap on what you can do with Pi. But great community and solid Linux support, makes up for it and then some.

I also didn't like this $7 shipping charges. it reminded me of 90's late night TV commercials with shipping and handling charges of nearly half the price of the goods themselves. This is not really a $15 computer. And if consider that not only you have to pay extra for BT and WiFi, you have to pay extra for shipping them even though they ship with the board,.. this all leaves a bad taste in your mouth even if you know what you are paying for. You feel your intelligence is being insulted and you have no choice but to take it.

Add to this what I call "lack of transparency", "emails whining about customers who whine", "quality issues", and then I find myself dealing with a company/team that I would never deal with again. I must also say that I am more disappointed in people on this forum that defend them and looking for sympathy because what some crazy guy did.

I already cancelled the two Pine 64 units I ordered after the pledge period ended and more likely than not, I will try to sell the two that I bought as part of the pledge (if/when I get them) provided I can get somebody to pay $8 for shipping for $40 worth of goods in this day and age.

I'll buy them with a smile on my face. Paypal only.

[devildog125]

I have bought 4 PI 3's and I am happy with them. I agree lack of 1G networking and being limited to 1G memory is putting a cap on what you can do with Pi. But great community and solid Linux support, makes up for it and then some.

I also didn't like this $7 shipping charges. it reminded me of 90's late night TV commercials with shipping and handling charges of nearly half the price of the goods themselves. This is not really a $15 computer. And if consider that not only you have to pay extra for BT and WiFi, you have to pay extra for shipping them even though they ship with the board,.. this all leaves a bad taste in your mouth even if you know what you are paying for. You feel your intelligence is being insulted and you have no choice but to take it.

Add to this what I call "lack of transparency", "emails whining about customers who whine", "quality issues", and then I find myself dealing with a company/team that I would never deal with again. I must also say that I am more disappointed in people on this forum that defend them and looking for sympathy because what some crazy guy did.

I already cancelled the two Pine 64 units I ordered after the pledge period ended and more likely than not, I will try to sell the two that I bought as part of the pledge (if/when I get them) provided I can get somebody to pay $8 for shipping for $40 worth of goods in this day and age.

I am in total agreement with this. Somebody in charge of a company shouldn't go on a rant about the way some customers act or what they do. He shouldn't whine about how stressful running a company is or whatever. The fanboys on this forums are the select few who have boards that actually run and boot into a running OS (not to mention un-bent boards). I had high hopes for this board but when you consider we never get good news in the KS updates, only one person who is employed by Pine64 runs the forums (not counting the overzealous fanboys)....I ultimately have boiled it down to this---Pine64 extremely over promised in their Kickstarter about what they could create and produce. This has led to them predictably under-delivering said products (literally and figuratively). I have sent an email to their "support" cancelling this order and would rather give it another company who can actually deliver products with better customer service...open source or not.

[Tarjei85]

I have bought 4 PI 3's and I am happy with them. I agree lack of 1G networking and being limited to 1G memory is putting a cap on what you can do with Pi. But great community and solid Linux support, makes up for it and then some.

I also didn't like this $7 shipping charges. it reminded me of 90's late night TV commercials with shipping and handling charges of nearly half the price of the goods themselves. This is not really a $15 computer. And if consider that not only you have to pay extra for BT and WiFi, you have to pay extra for shipping them even though they ship with the board,.. this all leaves a bad taste in your mouth even if you know what you are paying for. You feel your intelligence is being insulted and you have no choice but to take it.

Add to this what I call "lack of transparency", "emails whining about customers who whine", "quality issues", and then I find myself dealing with a company/team that I would never deal with again. I must also say that I am more disappointed in people on this forum that defend them and looking for sympathy because what some crazy guy did.

I already cancelled the two Pine 64 units I ordered after the pledge period ended and more likely than not, I will try to sell the two that I bought as part of the pledge (if/when I get them) provided I can get somebody to pay $8 for shipping for $40 worth of goods in this day and age.

I am in total agreement with this. Somebody in charge of a company shouldn't go on a rant about the way some customers act or what they do. He shouldn't whine about how stressful running a company is or whatever. The fanboys on this forums are the select few who have boards that actually run and boot into a running OS (not to mention un-bent boards). I had high hopes for this board but when you consider we never get good news in the KS updates, only one person who is employed by Pine64 runs the forums (not counting the overzealous fanboys)....I ultimately have boiled it down to this---Pine64 extremely over promised in their Kickstarter about what they could create and produce. This has led to them predictably under-delivering said products (literally and figuratively). I have sent an email to their "support" cancelling this order and would rather give it another company who can actually deliver products with better customer service...open source or not.

Completely understanding your frustration, But mabe you should cut them some slack. You should try starting a business with a goal of producing and sending a coupple of 100 boards just to find out the campaign has gone viral and you will need to produce 10 times (or maby even 100 times) what you originally planned.

I am not trying to explain away the bent boards and the fact that the KS campaign led us to believe this was a out-of-the-box-working item.

In the other hand it is a product that need a community to back it up when it comes to customization and bugfixes. Long live opensource 


If we follow your reasoning I am a so called fanboy. I did get a unbent board (Pine A64+ 2Gb) and it runs RemixOS and Android smooth. (random appclousure occurs but nothing big).

This product is in Beta  ( or maby even in Alpha) and as a member of the Pine community we all need to chip in where we can and otherwise just hold on to our pacience.


I dont like that you talk down the people on this forum spending most of their free time tweaking builds, helping other users or what ever else they do in the name of the Pine.

+1K in creds to all the contributers in here helping the rest of the community and doing all they can to get the Pine airlifted. Thank you all!

[Keex]

As a makeshift enclosure I just used a sharp knife to cut fitting holes (for the usb/ethernet/HDMI ports) into the sides of the paper box the PINE came in and strengthened the edges with some tape. Works quite well and looks suprisingly decent.

Hey Keex, thats exactly wot i plan to do tomorrow! haha. 
Just need to find some tiny screws/nuts so i can secure it...

Great minds eh 

dm

When the cables are plugged in (and a wireless receiver is in the usb in my case) I don't even have to secure it in the box ;-)

[alid]

[quote pid='5470' dateline='1460407462']
...
I dont like that you talk down the people on this forum spending most of their free time tweaking builds, helping other users or what ever else they do in the name of the Pine.

...

[/quote]

I am not sure where either me or the guy that was agreeing with me did this. Actually one of my few posts on this forum is thanking the guy who was working on solving the issue with 2G card and Ethernet and kind of complaining that nobody else is thanking him.

To me transparency means a lot. These guys are shipping from China for a very good reason. They pay China-post pretty much nothing and US-post has to take it. So charging $7 for shipping is BS. I would have preferred they charged $20 for the board and what it really cost them (or close to it) for shipping and handling. Not to mention, instead of shipping a bunch of them to US and then distributing them (like US distributors of Pi3 did), they continue to ship them from China -when they have charged us $7 for shipping- and this is why many of us are getting the boards so late. When I buy an Arduino on ebay from a Chinese supplier for $3.50 and no shipping charges, I know I should expect to wait for 3-4 weeks to get it. When I paid $7 shipping for this board, I had no idea they are going to ship it from China. To me, $7 shipping meant (or implied) they will definitely ship it from US with some tracking number and whatnot. and -this- kind of crap leaves a bad taste in your mouth and comments like: "nobody made you do it", is not going to wash it. And then I ask myself: Do I really want to deal with these guys again? and to me, the answer is no.

I don't fault them for the lack of software or bugs (when I mentioned Pi 3, I mentioned support for Linux as a plus, but a plus that did -not- come as a surprise to me). I do however fault them for whining all the time about how ungrateful we are. or the way they handle communication to their paying customers overall, or the sorry state of this forum with no technical contribution from their side.

Anyway, the OP in this thread was asking if we are disappointed or not and this is how I feel. You and others that don't like my answer would have been right to complain about my rant if I had posted it on other threads.