A $99 Laptop?! - Pinebook #Helpful Post

if you go on Amazon in search for a

laptop then sort by price lowest highest

the cheapest option is a hundred and

forty six dollars then if you go that's

not low enough and you fire up

Aliexpress it's about a hundred and

twenty seven us but what if I told you

that you can get a fully functional

laptop for just 99 US dollars you might

say to me gee Linus surely there's some

kind of catch and you'd be one smart

shopper because while this thing is

truly a fully functional laptop for 99

dollars

it's got one heck of a gotcha let's take

a look at it shall we

after we take a look at this message

from our sponsor Atlanta audio online

audios new mod mic Wireless features a

low latency connection high quality

sampler 8 led status indicators up to 12

hours of battery life and more check it

out at the link in the video description

so this is the pine book it comes from

the single board computer company pine

sixty-four and on first glance looks

like basically every other you know

macbook design ripoff

from 2008 it comes in a couple of

flavors so ours is the 11.6 inch version

that comes with an IPS display and then

there's a separate 14 inch version

that's got a TN panel instead what's

nice about the 14 inch version is that

it does have a bigger trackpad thinner

bezels and pretty much a full size 10

keyless keyboard while this one is

actually quite squished so it's got a

short backspace button it's got these

Pinner little arrow keys you'd probably

get used to that what you won't get used

to is the shifts now this one I think

this short left shift is actually

standard somewhere but this one how are

you supposed to get used to that overall

the the feel of the keyboard is actually

surprisingly good like I've seen laptops

that cost three four five times this

much that have more flex to their

keyboard overall so I'm there is some to

be clear but it's really not that bad

the thing weighs about a kilogram and

then it's got a point three megapixel

camera up here at the top io is actually

pretty reasonable for 2019 standards

microSD expansion headphone microphone

combo 3 1/2 millimeter jack USB type-a

which is nice to have another one of

those DC inputs so no USB type-c come on

guys and then due to the low profile of

the machine we're stuck with a mini HDMI

which in fairness gives us HDMI output

which is good but is very likely to

break this is really not a very robust

connector in terms of the internal specs

should we should we open this thing up

let's have a look at it let's do that

and there it is

Oh

a 1.2 gigahertz quad-core arm cortex a53

64-bit processor 2 gigabytes of lpddr3

RAM 16 gigs of emmc memory I'm just kind

of pointing vaguely at this small board

because it's it's it's all on here and

then we've got wireless n with Bluetooth

4.0 and you can see your antennas are

hooked up over here also of note is our

spectacular stereo speakers and oh yeah

look in this you can kind of see

everything in here so here's our magnet

for the top cover to keep it closed

there's your microphones does have dual

microphones so like an array microphone

and off for play though let's find out

just how much laptop you get for 99

bucks you're second now that we're

booted we're looking at a KDE neon Linux

desktop we see that there's actually no

5 gigahertz Wi-Fi support so just 2.4

gigahertz that's kind of to be expected

on something this low spec we can't I'm

gonna come in a little closer okay whoo

web page loading time is not spectacular

it's hard to say how much of the slow

experience for having right now is

software and how much is hardware though

because the pine 64 guys acknowledge

that this build of KDE neon is quite out

of date like it's got tons of issues

like the fact that it takes forever to

move the cursor across the screen you

can't adjust the display brightness but

then on the other hand the CPU and this

thing has a MIPS core of about around

11,000 which puts it somewhere in the

neighborhood of Sony's PlayStation 3 in

terms of performance with the GPU it's

actually a Mallee 400 MP 2 which gives

it about the performance of the original

Xbox so I'm not even were you expecting

this James I'm not even able to load

youtube.com/ fortunately our journey

doesn't end here though because the good

folks at Manjaro have a specific

build of their OS that you can load up

using etcher on a micro SD card and

boots of that instead which I think we

should probably do right about now

that's still slow yes yes it is so now

that we're in let's see if our

brightness adjustment works now

hey all right so this is already a

better experience but with the better

trackpad and the brighter display let's

see if YouTube even manages to load at

all okay this is a lot better but I

think the question that we need to

answer now is okay let's say that I'm

willing to learn to use Linux is this

usable so I'm gonna get logged into my

gmail maybe get some Libre Office on

here try and watch some YouTube videos

let's see volume out a hundred percent I

can't hear it at all okay so this is

weird after some dinking around in the

audio settings we found that we can

change our maximum volume to a hundred

and fifty percent so why don't we try

that first nothing we can change hey wow

that's really quiet

okay so a couple problems the fact that

it was configured to use the wrong audio

device out of the box not the end of the

world that's the kind of thing that you

can fix pretty quickly but it's got some

other issues so it does technically have

stereo speakers but it figures this is

the front right speaker and this is the

front left speaker you can actually hear

it coming out of this one my press issue

number two is that at a hundred percent

volume in both the application and the

device it's way too quiet and if we

crank it to a hundred and fifty percent

well it sounds like this

in fairness to it though if I was using

headphones the YouTube playback is

actually pretty reasonable although we

aren't at HD yet so let's try 720p we

are dropping a lot of frames here ok

let's go back to 480p even 480p in full

screen mode chugs if your objective is

purely just to watch youtube videos and

absorb the information you can do it

let's fire up email or something then

I'm not gonna lie guys this is not a

great experience even just performing a

search in Gmail so I just clicked an

email let's give her a hot second here

so this is like a cached page let's go

back so at this point I think it's

pretty clear that the hardware in here

is not really daily driver ready and by

the way if you were thinking oh well

maybe I could just play like ancient

games on it or something

unfortunately because it's got a Mallee

GPU and the Mallee drivers are not

open-source well 3d accelerations pretty

much not available on any arch based

images like Manjaro the lima drivers are

like a reverse engineered driver but

they're not complete so you could

install them on the pine book but you'd

have to recompile the kernel first and

it frankly would not be a good

experience at all anyway it's not

something that we'd recommend our final

project for this is to actually try to

install windows now as we mentioned

before this is an ARM based cpu but

Microsoft has been working on arm

versions of Windows for over half a

decade now remember the surface RT has a

long time ago so we're gonna give it a

shot maybe see if Windows can save this

experience

so to do this and this is our first

attempt at this actually this is the one

thing we didn't prep before the video we

used a tool called the windows on arm

deployer and an image that's actually

intended for use with the Raspberry Pi

which is also ARM based but isn't a pine

book so we're really not sure if this is

gonna work only one way to find out so

what we're trying to do right now is

figure out how to get it to boot to this

because when we threw mine djaro on a

micro SD it just automatically booted to

it but now it's not doing that

I tried F - I tried f8 I try to have 10

I actually f11 f11 makes an appearance

once in a while let's try delete come on

baby try f1 it help

given how utterly unsuitable this is for

daily driver use and the fact that our

initial attempts to install a Raspberry

Pi build of windows didn't work we

decided to abandon it because the

reality of it is pine sixty-four

flat-out says what this is not for this

is not a device to use as your current

work or school laptop and if that's what

you're after you probably need to look

elsewhere what it's really intended for

is as a low cost all-in-one solution for

armed Linux and BSD developers that are

looking to mainline the SOC or are

interested in some part of it like the

GPU for example one example is the Lima

project so that's not to say that

there's no potential for something like

this to achieve low-cost daily driver

status in the future in fact the

upcoming pine Book Pro could be a better

daily driver it's going to be 200 rather

than 100 dollars it's based on the RK

$33.99 so at the hexa core SOC six cores

with to a 72 s at two gigahertz four

gigs of ram instead of two 14 inch IPS

panel magnesium alloy body instead of

the plastic one USBC so in summary this

thing isn't what we hoped it was and

that shouldn't be a surprise because

they told us that it wasn't what we

hoped it was but if you clicked into

this and you're disappointed now because

you were like oh I was really kind of

hoping for a $100 laptop option we did

manage to find a couple other things

that look a bit more compelling so this

cheap Windows machine over on Walmart is

just a hundred and forty bucks it's got

a touchscreen it's a convertible

and it's only got 32 gigs of storage so

it's likely that Windows Update will

eventually be the death of it but it

does look fairly usable for the price

and this Chromebook over on new egg is a

bit more expensive it's over $200 and

it's a Chromebook so you're gonna have

software limitations finally the third

option as we always love to bring up

anytime someone's on a budget is picking

up something used a lot of the time you

can get a used laptop somewhere like

eBay or Craigslist or Kijiji let go

wherever for much cheaper than you could

get

something new especially if you're

looking at Windows machines or

Chromebooks as opposed to a MacBook or

something those things hold their value

incredibly well hide your true IP

address with private Internet access

P ia allows you to bypass to your

restrictions and censorship by making

you appear as though you are connecting

from somewhere else you can connect up

to five devices at once it's got an

Internet kill switch if your VPN gets

disconnected accidentally it prevents

DNS leaks and it includes Mase P IAS

built-in malware blocker P ia offers

various levels of encryption that can be

customized and they've got apps for

Windows Mac Android iOS and a Chrome

extension so check it out at LM GGG / p

IA linus - we're gonna have that linked

below so thanks for watching guys if you

disliked this video you can hit that

button but if you liked it hit like get

subscribed or maybe consider checking

out where to buy the stuff we featured

as long as you are the intended audience

at the link in the video description

also down there is our merch store which

has cool shirts like this one and our

community forum which you should totally

join