Do Any Of You Have Regrets?

[quadomatic]

I suppose there is a decent bit of whining, and while we may take for granted that we have a lot of talented developers willing to put out software for free, for the most part I think we remember that devs make software because they want to, and just to satisfy us.

I think sometimes we may forget to separate OP from the devs. We paid OP, but we didn't pay the devs...

 

[Elanzer]

My only regret is that I have BONEITIS

 

[SyruM]

I totally agree with Drack also.

I have to admit I dont know much about the open source handheld scene, I am literally getting my feet wet with the pandora so I am new to this, devs, previous open source handhelds, and otherwise, so my opinions are of a person outside looking in...

Reading the posts and seeing people come in and basically insult ZodTTD, its pretty out of order. The guy comes along to a small group of ppl with a project and lofty hopes of making a great product, and says he will make a psx emulator for it when he did not have to. Who cares what he does for the iphone, if people put time into something they deserve to get paid for it if they want to, and the iphone is all about money anyway tbh.. and porting still takes time and knowdledge

In a nut shell if you have bad opinions of a dev trying to create something for a community then unless you can, and will do better, keep your opinions to yourself.

This forum is far too rude sometimes lol, sry to those users that are nice

 

[Monk]

I felt similar for the first day or so, but it's the nature of the pandora. It wasn't meant to be a 'plug in and play' device.

I keep seeing statements like this - or often stronger - that seem to contradict actual OpenPandora statements in order to excuse some issue or other with the Pandora. For example, from the OpenPandora web site:

You don't need to be a developer to use the Pandora. You don't even need to know anything about Linux. Using the Pandora is very easy.

If just being able to use a web browser is what you meant by "computer literate" then I apologise - but the Pandora is very, VERY much sold/marketed/meant to be "easy to use" WITHOUT technical or Linux-specific knowledge. On the OpenPandora web/sales site.

I dont have a pandora myself but I would think if you select minimenu (on one of the later units we're very much still in baby stage) it will be like that.

I don't have a Pandora either, so I can't judge - my issue is just with the spreading of misinformation. Whichever/whatever bit is misinformation! So I get riled up when we're told "it's easy to use - almost anyone can do it!" AND "it's only sold to tech junkie's because it's a hackers device" or "If you pushed the screen with the stylus hard enough to click it into the lock position, you'd probably damage the screen!" vs "The lid flops down to the 180 degrees lock position" or "This is no Sony or Nintendo product, devoid of loving care - this is US so it will be better - as devoid of flaws as it can be!" vs "Well, it's not Sony, Nintendo, or Apple product so OF COURSE it's going to be a bit rough around the edges".

I get what the Pandora is, or at least what *I* think it is, and that doesn't irk me. What irks me is that contradictory statements are made about it so that the reader can get whatever answer pleases him most. That doesn't help me. I'd rather problems were dealt with well (as they have been, AFAICS) so that later Pandoras meet the promises, rather than excusing the problems and making it sound like the Pandora will never be a great device. IMHO. A lot of it stems from the contradictory statements from OP, but so much more of it seems to be made up on the fly to excuse minor failings


EDIT:

My impression of the pandora has always been that it is aimed at a niche market and not meant for your 'average consumer'.

But going by that quote you pulled from the OP site, this isn't the intention of the OP team. But at this stage I would say it really isn't all that accessible.

Ah! Thanks. I must admit tha tI wans't looking specifically to diss or discuss with you because, a sI said, I KEEP seeing things like that (often stronger) so it's not just you - far from it.

I'd agree that the Pandora is currently undergoing some growing pains/early adopter agony that makes it far less attractive to less savvy and... persistent people, shall we say. The device could, and hopefully will, reach the level of gloss that they've been selling it as having, both in terms of hardware and software - most of the work should be in the software arena, where the community will hopefully "fix it up" for them (as indeed much of the pre-release software work has been done by highly talented community members).

Apologies if I come across as gruff - that isn't meant to be, it's just like chinese water torture to see the same kind of drip-drip-drip of excuses. The reality is fair enough IMHO to not need excusing, unless/except where the problem is specific and down to poor QC.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS MY BRUTALLY HONEST OPINIONS ABOUT MY EARLY BATCH PANDORA AFTER 2 DAYS OF USE. IF YOU ARE A FANBOY OR ARE OFFENDED EASILY BY NEGATIVE COMMENTS TOWARDS THIS HANDHELD (you know who you are...), YOU BEST MOVE ALONG NOW.

Many thanks for your post, and Someguy99's respons e(among others). I am hoping that, with the possible exception of the shoulder buttons, your Pandora will "even out" with use.

 

[WizardStan]

hmmmm...well, lets say a person does a port and people donate cash because they want to encourage more ports. I'm totally fine with that. But flat out charging for an emulator that you didn't actually code seems wrong to me. It's just my opinion, take it or leave it I don't care.

I know it's your opinion. I'm not trying to change it. I'm pointing out that your reason for holding that opinion is flawed though. Have an opinion, but have it for the right reasons. Paddy made a blanket "I will never pay for an emulator" remark a month back as if emulators were somehow worth less than any other software, a statement that ignores a lot of the hard work that goes into both writing and porting/optimizing an emulator, and you're making a similar statement right now.

 

[fearofshorts]

Two things:
1- ZOD never said anything in this thread. He has not stated that he wants to charge for his work. That was another person speculating on a possibility- not ZOD stating a fact about his software. Stop insulting him for something somebody else speculated that he might do.
2- The shoulder button issue will be fixed for the remaining (un-produced) Pandoras because, as ED said, the issue was that the paint made the buttons too large and they had to manually cut bits off. Now they are asking the factory to send them unpainted shoulder buttons. Problem solved.

 

[x68000]

I can't seem to find the emulator source code anywhere. Just curious, but any links to it?

http://github.com/zodttd/psx4all

I'm afraid I have to agree. I'm all for donations but if you port something that someone else made and then ask for money...If the emulator was built from scratch and you wanted to charge for it then I would be 100% behind that decision.

Porting something isn't always just a matter of downloading the source and hitting compile, especially when it comes to an emulator. A lot of work can be required to take something that works well on one system and make it work equally as well on something else. If an author deems that the weeks or months of work required to make it work well is worth some money, who are you, really, to argue?

Usually they are done in a few days, a week at best. And talking about zodttd specifically, it doesn't look like he did very good job (PicoDrive at least, based on feedback I've read on his forums).

I've tried all of Zod's emulators for the iphone and none are worth paying for, every one of them falls short.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a very minimal OS turns up so that Notaz's Picodrive runs at he intended.

 

[sold]

Dude, I'm no expert, but what does a minimal OS have to do with Picodrive running better? I would've thought the issues lie in the way it was ported.

 

[EvilDragon]

@Azure:
Since you have an unresponsive DPad to the right AND crappy shoulder buttons, it seems to me that you REALLY have one of the first units where we didn't check that out.
If it's just the shoulder buttons and the DPad (Keymat), this can be easily fixed, I'm sure OpenPandoraSales will take care about that.

Apart from that and the ease of use:
I have no idea how to make such a device easier to use without losing functionalities.
It's like a small PC - and therefore, you can do the same things with it.

 

[x68000]

Dude, I'm no expert, but what does a minimal OS have to do with Picodrive running better? I would've thought the issues lie in the way it was ported.

A minimal OS has less overhead and far fewer processes taking place in the background.

It may help issues such as the current sound glitch one

 

[fusion_power]

Dude, I'm no expert, but what does a minimal OS have to do with Picodrive running better? I would've thought the issues lie in the way it was ported.

A minimal OS has less overhead and far fewer processes taking place in the background.

It may help issues such as the current sound glitch one

And I really thought, Angstrom already is a "minimal OS" compared to other OS. ^^""""

 

[x68000]

^ We need GP32 'minimal'

 

[Nova]

2- The shoulder button issue will be fixed for the remaining (un-produced) Pandoras because, as ED said, the issue was that the paint made the buttons too large and they had to manually cut bits off. Now they are asking the factory to send them unpainted shoulder buttons. Problem solved.

Yes, problem solved.

Except for the people who already have their Pandoras.

 

[Alpha2]

I dont really see how people complain about ease of use with the Pandora being any worse than any other computer.

There may be a few bugs in the first software versions but we were all told that months in advance that there were going to be things that needed cleaning up. Almost every emulator released so far has been what most of the devs would consider "a quick port" so I'm not surprised of some of the weird quirks I've heard of. Even when you look into the things that are legitimately reasons to suggest the Pandora isnt easy to use they're entirely subjective complaints; "Mine crashed" "Mine can't read PNDs" Plenty of other people seem to be getting by without these complaints or with enough infrequency that it's not clogging the boards with a hundred complaints of the same issue. We've seen a dozen Unboxing vids of people opening the box and being into XFCE in under 5 minutes. Even if you have trouble getting wifi working has anyone ever tried to get a DS connected to a Wifi network? it's the most ridiculous exercise in hoping you get lucky I've ever experienced! I dont know a single person who's DS worked on line the first day out of the box only to just suddenly have it connect, And that's from a MAJOR hardware platform holder!

Honestly? It seems to have no more an issue than any other PC, Mac or other computer because they ALL do something stupid at some point. This may be redundant but on my Win-vista laptop at this very moment I have these issues: I can't play WMV video regardless of reinstalling my codecs, My cursor has apparently JUST disappeared while typing this post(edit only to return by the time I reached the end), right after I turned it on the Wifi indicator in the icon tray has a little red X on it that says I cant connect to the router yet somehow I'm online right now. Yet I wouldnt be surprised if half these problems were fixed by a reboot, because all computers do stupid shit at some point or another.
You're not exempt either MAC, with your randomly quitting out of programs during important tasks. <_<

 

[quadomatic]

^ We need GP32 'minimal'

Isn't there a thread where Skeezix mentioned he made something where just the kernel and libs needed for games are loaded? That's about as minimal as it gets, isn't it?

 

[fusion_power]

^ We need GP32 'minimal'

This would be pretty minimal I guess.

Well, as long as it helps to reach the hardware in a more efficient way, then they can do whatever helps. The OMAP of the Pandora is so powerful, it could fire up the most beautiful games ever seen onto an Handheld. I've seen, what's possible onto an NDS and this thing has actualy pretty poor Processor Power compared to the OMAP. NDS: "CPUs: Two ARM processors, an ARM946E-S main CPU and ARM7TDMI coprocessor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively

We have 500MHz, we have NEON, we have SGX we have DSP...try and stop us! :lol:

 

[SomeGuy99]

I dont really see how people complain about ease of use with the Pandora being any worse than any other computer.

The firmware is a total headache right now, but stuff will get fixed. After reaching the peak of corrupting the same memory card 5 times in a row (and figuring out what was causing it and how to avoid that) I'm not having any issues at all!

I'm not a Linux noob either. I'm mucking around in the shell, installing stuff from the Angstrom repositories and making scripts. I'm having loads of fun to be honest.

B)

Never sweep the bugs under the carpet and pretend they don't exist. Bugs need to be squashed!!!

^ We need GP32 'minimal'

This would be pretty minimal I guess.

Well, as long as it helps to reach the hardware in a more efficient way, then they can do whatever helps. The OMAP of the Pandora is so powerful, it could fire up the most beautiful games ever seen onto an Handheld. I've seen, what's possible onto an NDS and this thing has actualy pretty poor Processor Power compared to the OMAP. NDS: "CPUs: Two ARM processors, an ARM946E-S main CPU and ARM7TDMI coprocessor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively

We have 500MHz, we have NEON, we have SGX we have DSP...try and stop us! :lol:

After five days of Pandora use I switched on my DS today... oh yuck! What the hell?! It seems to nasty and low tech now - the hinge angle is all wrong (at first it was the Pandora that was too far back, now the DS is too far forward) and the pixels seem really visible and ugly. Oh, and the screen is too pink!

Yeah, I regret buying my Pandora... because now all my other handhelds (DS, PSP, Ipod Touch, even my laptop) seem really low tech and rubbish now. I paid good money for those!!

 

[EvilDragon]

I dont really see how people complain about ease of use with the Pandora being any worse than any other computer.

The firmware is a total headache right now, but stuff will get fixed. After reaching the peak of corrupting the same memory card 5 times in a row (and figuring out what was causing it and how to avoid that) I'm not having any issues at all!

I'm not a Linux noob either. I'm mucking around in the shell, installing stuff from the Angstrom repositories and making scripts. I'm having loads of fun to be honest.

B)

Never sweep the bugs under the carpet and pretend they don't exist. Bugs need to be squashed!!!

Soo... if you knew what caused this, have you put this into the Bugtracker?

 

[SomeGuy99]

Two things:
1- ZOD never said anything in this thread. He has not stated that he wants to charge for his work. That was another person speculating on a possibility- not ZOD stating a fact about his software. Stop insulting him for something somebody else speculated that he might do.
2- The shoulder button issue will be fixed for the remaining (un-produced) Pandoras because, as ED said, the issue was that the paint made the buttons too large and they had to manually cut bits off. Now they are asking the factory to send them unpainted shoulder buttons. Problem solved.

I hate to break it to you, but the shoulder buttons (when they work) just aren't that good. They don't feel nice at all, and I'm hoping some kind of mod will make improve the feel/travel.

I'm becoming so attached to my Pandora now that stuff like the crap shoulder buttons doesn't matter. Because the right one isn't working, I need to send it back to Craig for sorting out, but I really don't want to! I can't be without the little buggar for that long. I'm attached to the thing that much... it's bloody irrational really.

I should point out that I have a fairly extensive handheld collection... but this is true love.

^ We need GP32 'minimal'

This would be pretty minimal I guess.

Well, as long as it helps to reach the hardware in a more efficient way, then they can do whatever helps. The OMAP of the Pandora is so powerful, it could fire up the most beautiful games ever seen onto an Handheld. I've seen, what's possible onto an NDS and this thing has actualy pretty poor Processor Power compared to the OMAP. NDS: "CPUs: Two ARM processors, an ARM946E-S main CPU and ARM7TDMI coprocessor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively

We have 500MHz, we have NEON, we have SGX we have DSP...try and stop us! :lol:

I think I know... it's sort of half superstition and trial/error really. I don't know how the inner guts of Linux work that well.

 

[Loonie]

I regret that I didn't order sooner.