2 Months..... umm, weeks to go (2012-02-06)

[EvilDragon]

Well, the problem is: We have a complete product.


Doing something like a BeagleBoard or Raspberry is easy - you only need to design the PCB.


You don't need to check that it will fit into your case.


Just tweaking both the case and the PCB to fit together perfectly while the controls and keyboard feel comfortable took a LOT longer than we expected.


Basically, a change in the mold or PCB takes 1 - 2 months to be produced, so with three or four changes, it adds up to 6 - 10 months...

 

[gruso]

If RPi gets to mass-market, and instantly-fulfilled orders quicker than OP, I will have quite a chuckle to myself.

The Raspberry Pi was conceived in 2006, and has been in hardware development for three years And I understand that it has strong financial backers. I wonder what their story would be like, if they'd scraped together funds from preorders and laid it all bare in the forums for those three years... probably no prettier than this one.

 

[renegadechic]

Sure, OP have actually technically delivered more units but it seems to me that RPi is actually much closer to a viable business and hasn't had to beg for money and upgrades at every single stage.

well the raspberry pi is being developed by the raspberry pi foundation which is a charity which means it would have had backing for development from the start rather than relying on pre-orders. it will have had extra money available to ensure manufacturing goes smoothly and i expect that compared to 2008, the technology to make these kinds of high spec boards has been significantly improved. there were more issues with bad boards when the pandora started. they are also starting manufacture after a longer development process and hopefully for their sake, not at a time when the economy is going to fall on its ass, causing components to not be stockpiled in the same way.


tl;dr you're very misinformed

 

[elwing]

Well, the problem is: We have a complete product.


Doing something like a BeagleBoard or Raspberry is easy - you only need to design the PCB.


You don't need to check that it will fit into your case.


Just tweaking both the case and the PCB to fit together perfectly while the controls and keyboard feel comfortable took a LOT longer than we expected.


Basically, a change in the mold or PCB takes 1 - 2 months to be produced, so with three or four changes, it adds up to 6 - 10 months...

as I told, you have some good reasons, that wasn't meant to be rude.


but for thoses exact points you mention and all the like, a good share of the 1st preorder won't see their pandora for several month, maybe even years. GC promised what 150board/week, considering a good share of these go to new preorder, considering there will be some assembly and without even other external problem, getting the 1000 or so preorder shipped WILL take long...

 

[BeefJerky]

Sigh. Great that things are moving, yet again. Progress is good. That yet again first batchers, the very first supporters of this project, the ones who showed faith, put up their money in the first days and took a chance on an idea and (let's face it) haven't exactly been shown to be right in doing so, are being bumped 1000 units down the queue is pretty disgusting. Yes, there are reasons. Always reasons - one thing the Pandora seems very good at generating! Love the suggestion that this is a win-win situation.


I understand that the early years of this farce weren't your fault, ED, and you do seem to be doing a great job in trying to pick up the pieces but I hope you understand how this feels to a first batcher who ordered when... 2008, was it?


ED, can you give us a reasonable and honest expectation when the remaining first batchers will receive their units?

 

[EvilDragon]

Sigh. Great that things are moving, yet again. Progress is good. That yet again first batchers, the very first supporters of this project, the ones who showed faith, put up their money in the first days and took a chance on an idea and (let's face it) haven't exactly been shown to be right in doing so, are being bumped 1000 units down the queue is pretty disgusting. Yes, there are reasons. Always reasons - one thing the Pandora seems very good at generating! Love the suggestion that this is a win-win situation.

Well, I'm not sure if you haven't been right in doing so.


You paid 200 EUR less

I understand that the early years of this farce weren't your fault, ED, and you do seem to be doing a great job in trying to pick up the pieces but I hope you understand how this feels to a first batcher who ordered when... 2008, was it?

Sure. Can you imagine how it feels to have 300,000 EUR debts because of the whole project?


Of course I want to finish off everything as good and fast as possible.

ED, can you give us a reasonable and honest expectation when the remaining first batchers will receive their units?

Not that easy, as I don't know how many first-batchers and second-batchers Craig has exactly.


I got about 300 first-batchers left and 200 second-batchers.


Right now, if no one upgrades and no one swaps his old PCB for a new one, about 300 units of the 1000 are going out to classic customers (so 150 to Craig and 150 to my customers).


About the same amount of units for the second 1000 units.


So from my queue, all first batchers should have it within 2 months.


Probably similar for Craigs customers.


Any "premium" upgrade or upgrade from an existing old PCB will add money to the pot which will allow to send more of the new PCBs to classic customers.


So the above is a worst-case scenario right now.

 

[Shpuld]

...within 2 months...

I see what you did there!

 

[notyu1459]

So from my queue, all first batchers should have it within 2 months.

FUUUUUU-

 

[BeefJerky]

Can you imagine how it feels to have 300,000 EUR debts because of the whole project?

Not great, I imagine. I hope you got into it better informed than we did! As for paying 200Euros less, well we haven't actually got anything yet so that only really counts when (if) we do and, while it sounds nice I guess, it's a testament to just how badly wrong your predecessors got it. They really were in no position to be taking money from anyone, much less making estimates that it would be delivered by Christmas of that year. Again, I realise that was not you and it would be unfair to lay blame in your direction, nevertheless it is a part of the process we've all gone through.


I do appreciate the answers though.I don't envy you having to read these posts sometimes. But it also went beyond ridiculous a long, long time ago for those of us on this end (and I imagine for you too at times) and being bumped yet again really doesn't ease that.


So... 2 months™? Well nice to have an estimate, I guess

 

[EvilDragon]

Can you imagine how it feels to have 300,000 EUR debts because of the whole project?

Not great, I imagine. I hope you got into it better informed than we did! As for paying 200Euros less, well we haven't actually got anything yet so that only really counts when (if) we do and, while it sounds nice I guess, it's a testament to just how badly wrong your predecessors got it.

Well, I remember I told Craig back then that I will only accept preorders if he's 110% sure all units will be working and delivered by christmas 2008 (or shortly after).


I'm one of the guys who really hates taking risks


Craig was sure it will work out (he also didn't expect that many issues), so I was fine with it... but I sure didn't expect it and wouldn't have done so.


However, while I don't like taking risks, I always take responsibility (well, the whole team does).


Just filing insolvency and calling it quit would never be an option for me.


I'll rather continue to work 20 hours a day for free on the Pandora and make sure I deliver to my customers what I promised back then... even if it had a huge delay.

 

[fusion_power]

The volcano was a single one-off incident in 2010. I don't think it "miraculous" that the week or so delay it caused (only in air shipping) didn't really put a huge dint in the economy of businesses country-wide. And almost all of the *real* problems were somehow down to mismanagement, cutting corners, failing to check details, etc.

When I remember correctly, the Volcano didn't actualy delayed the Pandora production directly. It turned out after the Volcano erruption was gone, that the Chinese Company actualy didn't anything during this time (or did not finished it), they were not ready at all to ship when shipping was possible again.

 

[Gring]

Ed, did CC not supply you with 300k€ worth of pcbs that you paid ?


For such an amount, wouldn't it be worth suing them ?


I mean, this should be quite a straightforward and fast (in justice times) case, even if it takes a bit of time.

 

[TDT]

What may be kinda nice is once things start producing, and we have a trend and a calculation for the number of new/old customers receiving their products to calculate the estimate date for each person in the queue. I'm assuming you have a few lists of people right now who make up these queues. Developing a small algorithm of sorts where someone puts in their email, and receives their expected delivery date should be pretty straightforward.


This would alleviate a lot of the concerns, I feel. I, like others here, have no clue where in the queue I'm in. I, personally would like to know. I doubt I'm alone in that too.

 

[ledow]

Developing a small algorithm of sorts where someone puts in their email, and receives their expected delivery date should be pretty straightforward.

I refer you to forums posts dated 2008/9 where everyone posits the same question and receives answer along the lines of "No, we don't have adequate access to our own customer/finance database to do that". I don't think the situation has or will change that much.

 

[jkt]

Developing a small algorithm of sorts where someone puts in their email, and receives their expected delivery date should be pretty straightforward.

I refer you to forums posts dated 2008/9 where everyone posits the same question and receives answer along the lines of "No, we don't have adequate access to our own customer/finance database to do that".

They will have a list of who's in what queue, and what position they're in. Combining that with the unit/queue allocation ratio, it would be easy to let people know how many units need to be completed before they get theirs.


That information along with projected unit-completion rates (and associated time-frames), would give enough to approximate delivery dates to people.


It shouldn't be difficult to do.

 

[Annales]

... worth suing them ?

Psssss... we're not supposed to talk about this. Craig is preparing his dossier with the lawer.


It will probably come to day once all the pandoras are delivered.

 

[Grench]

Once I get my Pandora, I'll be saving up for a future revision.

Good call - though ED has already been kind enough to talk about upgrades as a possibility too.

Makes me wonder how long I should wait before considering a new Pandora.

Don't put it off. They are fabulous machines. I have had mine for around 10 months now and it goes everywhere with me.

 

[TDT]

Developing a small algorithm of sorts where someone puts in their email, and receives their expected delivery date should be pretty straightforward.

I refer you to forums posts dated 2008/9 where everyone posits the same question and receives answer along the lines of "No, we don't have adequate access to our own customer/finance database to do that". I don't think the situation has or will change that much.

The information that's needed, as what was already kinda pointed out is the email, place, and number of units ordered. The actual lookup could just be by email...and doesn't need to do anything more than display a number. Should be relatively easy to implement and require no extra security. Think of it as the way one uses a password reminding option that's available on many sites.

 

[Timstertoo]

Developing a small algorithm of sorts where someone puts in their email, and receives their expected delivery date should be pretty straightforward.

I refer you to forums posts dated 2008/9 where everyone posits the same question and receives answer along the lines of "No, we don't have adequate access to our own customer/finance database to do that".

They will have a list of who's in what queue, and what position they're in. Combining that with the unit/queue allocation ratio, it would be easy to let people know how many units need to be completed before they get theirs.


That information along with projected unit-completion rates (and associated time-frames), would give enough to approximate delivery dates to people.


It shouldn't be difficult to do.

Yes very true. But no.


Apparantely it's impossible to tell even how many pre orders are left in total. Let alone the queue positions.


Although I sympathise a lot with people that are getting pissed at the moment. I believe ED is making the best of a shitty situation and there is little point in making him resent the people he's seeing this through for.


After donating to the forum thingy Craig asked for and not seeing any of the badges that were promised and the whole drama bomb situation over the mini metal Pandoras (did they ever ship?) Not that it's a big deal but I do feel rather stupid to be fooled twice and will not even mildly entertain the thought of upgrading. Not throwing good money after bad money. I haven't had a single email form GBAX updating me on my order ever since the payment confirmation. I'm already dreading the work I have to put into getting the unit I paid for after the future forum post by OPT that batch1 is completely delivered and I haven't got mine yet.


I'll use the upgrade money to make direct donations to devs for software I use and through that do my (financial) bit in helping to keep this project alive.

 

[Christoph.Krn]

They will have a list of who's in what queue, and what position they're in. Combining that with the unit/queue allocation ratio, it would be easy to let people know how many units need to be completed before they get theirs.


That information along with projected unit-completion rates (and associated time-frames), would give enough to approximate delivery dates to people.

If I'm informed correctly, there really is no such 'official' list, and if I remember correctly (I might be wrong on this), Ed once said that creating such a list would be extremely difficult.


There is, however, some crowd-sourced data from ED's queue available on gp2x.de, collected by a subset of the users of that forum. It can be parsed automatically and it's likely that more data will be added once Pandoras start shipping again.


Someone published a diagram of that data created on 30oct2011 (which might or might not be useful).