Sundog reminded me that the pinenote exists today, and this has been upsetting.
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It's almost exactly what I want out of a second computer, but all the ways that it isn't are such massive pains in the ass that I can barely stand it.
And I can't find mine.
I did find what I believe is a pinebook pro. It was in the garage, on a shelf. The garage is not climate controlled.
I do not know if it will boot, if I am ever able to trickle charge enough juice into it to get it to boot. (a process which can take literal days on a dead pinebook!)
I didn't look too closely at it, just threw it in the car. It's possible it is not a pinebook pro, but instead another simularly formfactored machine. There were dozens of them, you know, the Chromebooks and what have you, and I often ended up with spares because I collected other people's ewaste.
There was a period of maybe a decade when I would turn old Chromebooks and other old ewaste computers and peripherals into video editing boxes or whatever other single purpose thing people in my life needed.
I don't do that much anymore, but it seems like time to start again
It was indeed my pine book pro.
And it was DIRTY. I clorox'd it, and it's looking better now.
It is charging now, allegedly, or at least the red charging light is on. But nothing happens when I press the power button.
If I recall correctly, that means it will take 24 hours or more before anything happens when I press the power button (or! Because it was in the garage for so long without A/C and with humidity, perhaps it will never turn on again.)
I remember kind of hating this thing, but I don't know if that's because I was Big Mad at computers when I was using it, or because it sucks.
Looking at it today, it's kind of a beautiful machine, in a weird way. Black brushed metal chassis, absolutely no exterior branding whatsoever, the only interior branding is the meta key.
It's thin, but feels fairly substantial. It's thinner than my current laptop, but not by much (my current laptop is pretty thick by modern standards, because it has the juice.)
IIRC, when power management worked, the battery life was pretty great.
I know the last time I used it, I was using it for video editing.
But, based on where I found this thing, the last time it was used was before we opened the makerspace.
Which means *well* before we started New Ellijay Television.
So who knows what video I was editing.
I said at the top of the thread that being reminded of the pine note was upsetting.
I should unpack that, I don't have much hate towards the device.
When I got mine, super early adopter, I knew it was unfinished and software support wasn't great. It was running AOSP, and the experience of using it was pretty frustrating, even when just using it as like a termux terminal with a bluetooth keyboard, both because the screen refresh was bad (even by normal eink standards) and also because tablets suck for the workflows I want.
Eventually there was a full debian build, but flashing it onto the device was a pain in the ass, and I was *big mad* at computers at that point so I didn't bother.
And then I misplaced the thing in the makerspace.
