If you've heard the name Pine64 before, it's most likely in relation to the Pine A64 single-board computer sold by the company as an alternative to the Raspberry Pi. However, Pine64 is branching out and will launch a couple of extremely cheap laptops next month.
The so-called Pinebook laptop will ship in two forms, both offering the same internal components while one has an 11.6-inch screen and the other a larger 14-inch panel. Inside you'll find a 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex A53 processor running at 1.2GHz coupled with 2GB DDR3 RAM. Graphics will be handled by the embedded dual-core Mali 400 MP2 GPU, and storage, as with most cheap laptops, is limited to a 16GB eMMC flash drive. According to OMG!Ubuntu!, power is provided by a 10,000mAh LiPo battery and there will be two USB 2.0 ports, a MicroSD card slot, headphone jack, and mini HDMI out.
The spec is far from great, and we don't know what the screen resolution will be (although 1366-by-768 would be my guess). But then you have to remember the price.
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Both these laptops are under $100 and will run a fully-functional operating system in the form of Linux. Pine64 is yet to announce which distribution of Linux the Pinebook will use, but according to gamehelp.guru it will either be Debian or a flavor of Ubuntu. The warranty on these laptops is only 90 days, and that drops to 30 days if you open the casing.
The reason Pine64 can offer such cheap laptops is in part due to the choice of components, which just so happen to be the same as the Pine A64 single-board computer. You can pick one of those up for just $15, although the model with 2GB of RAM (Pine A64+) costs $29.
Neither model of the Pinebook is up for pre-order just yet, but you can register with Pine64 to be emailed when they become available. Tempted?