So, my Pi-Top arrived last week. Today I took everything out and put it together. Here are some initial observations:
Slick packaging, well thought-out, and very professional. It looks like a real product the minute you open the box.
This is a cool educational device that will help kids tinker, but it is definitely a work in progress. But this is not the Arm-based laptop I’ve wanted for years. When I get some time I’ll fire up my Samsung Arm Chromebook and see what modern Ubuntu looks like on it.
Each ‘education’ drive seems to want to roll their own UI. Sugar was pretty radical, but Pi OS just seems like a launcher on top of Raspbian, and is buggy out of the box. I haven’t used a Kano, so I can’t comment there. I do wonder if there’s any real benefit in not sticking to a standard interface — they’re not creating value here, and including LIbreOffice would also probably be a good idea.
The keyboard and trackpad really suck. I mean, really suck. There is no way to touch-type, keypresses often get lost, and the touchpad to the side thing isn’t working for me. I was going to write a review of the Pi-Top on it, but I’m already so frustrated with the keyboard that I don’t think that’s possible. It is the main method of input, so it would be nice if it worked well. Perhaps it will get better the more it’s used. For the record, the OLPC keyboard also sucked.
I’ll kick the tyres on it for a few days, then write up a more detailed review.