Got My Pandora. First Impressions.

[Alpha2]

What is a light-pipe?

It is what you do when you want to get stoned. You light pipe.

This side of DaveC scares me... Not the insinuation of smoking pot, the jokes.


Actually Jokes aside I'm really curious to hear more about the keyboard. Like how quickly are you able to type with it now that you've had a while to work with it. Typing notes is one thing but have you gotten comfortable to where you feel you can type a whole forum post with little to no effort or how about typing papers or letters? There was a time where I tried using the PSP to post on forums and it got old fast just trying to type one sentence. Considering the number of threads we've have about the keyboard I wonder if it feels like you at any point want to just plug in a USB keyboard or if you feel like it'll be second nature after while if not already.

 

[Prophet]

Ah, very nice impressions and photos!

Even though I don't have a Pandora, and am still on the fence about reordering one (only because I don't really play games much anymore), I'll be following the progress of it with great interest. I'm just amazed that this actually happened. I can't wait to see what the software is like on this thing after a few months. There are some killer devs onboard, and just look what they did with much less capable hardware in the past.

 

[ste_167]

Cheers for the minimenu info Skeezix. I should have my Pandora either today or Monday so will follow your instructions.

Just to address the Pandora quality control comments, here's a some issues I've had with other gear:

PSP 1000 -
O button needed pressing harder than others
UMD disk cover was wonky

DS -
B button needed pressing harder than others
Right shoulder button - no click, needed pressing harder
Excess glue seaping around seals, not pretty

Xbox 360 -
Onto number 4...
LB1 now broken on a controller

I've never had a problem with any of my Sega consoles though! (Or my GP32!)

 

[paddy]

Skeezix ,if there was a webrowser i could use in minimenu i am sure i would be using it more than the OS ,currently the web browser is only used to view read me documents ,so what we need is a browser suited to minimenu and the ability to play music/radio in the background ,this is the only reason i don't use it more but here is an idea below.


Can we have say booting into the os then running mini menu as an app and it can me minimised ? meaning i can open my media player/web browser or what ever i am doing at that time ,keep it all open and switch to minimenu when i want to run my games/emulators and sys cfg stuff then when i want to jump back to the os to change music or work on a document there is a minimise minimenu ,or even the option to run minimenu within the os and close mini menu and return to the current open session in the os.

that would be great stuff man.

 

[gruso]

Great review & pics Prometheus. I'd be a little miffed if I had a missing lightpipe, but I can see where you're coming from with the charm thing. Like Pikachu if he lost an eye in a freak boating accident.

 

[EvilDragon]

Skeezix ,if there was a webrowser i could use in minimenu i am sure i would be using it more than the OS ,currently the web browser is only used to view read me documents ,so what we need is a browser suited to minimenu and the ability to play music/radio in the background ,this is the only reason

Grab that file here:
http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,112,69

You can then use Arora with Minimenu.
Fennec should automatically appear in Minimenu anyways.

With the next hotfix, all XFCE-Programs should also appear in Minimenu

 

[Monk]

Wow, first review done by someone that isn't overly negative! Great review, I hope I get mine soon. Some of the other reviews that have been popping up have kinda put me off but now I'm excited again, this is both a good and a bad thing as now it's harder to wait.

I had similar feelings after reading this. Thanks Prometheus!

Actually, I've found the "negative" reviews quite raise my expectations of the device. After all this time (and so on) my expectations of the quality of Pandora had dropped below what even the negative comments are reporting. It's still nice to see super-glowy reviews like Prometheus' though - balance, life is all about balance

 

[gruso]

I'm also reminded of my first days with the GP2X, and how it felt kind of quirky at first. The process of settling into it over a few days was exactly how people are describing the feeling of settling into Pandora. Now, putting the GP2X in my hands is like putting an old, comfy pair of jeans on - a feeling I still don't get from my Dingoo or DS. I'm looking forward to this little journey again.

 

[ste_167]

I'm also reminded of my first days with the GP2X, and how it felt kind of quirky at first. The process of settling into it over a few days was exactly how people are describing the feeling of settling into Pandora. Now, putting the GP2X in my hands is like putting an old, comfy pair of jeans on - a feeling I still don't get from my Dingoo or DS. I'm looking forward to this little journey again.

I can't wait to try out the keyboard as ALOT of thought has been put into providing a layout that works for thumb typing.

 

[hch]

never mind

 

[Prometheus]

Actually Jokes aside I'm really curious to hear more about the keyboard. Like how quickly are you able to type with it now that you've had a while to work with it. Typing notes is one thing but have you gotten comfortable to where you feel you can type a whole forum post with little to no effort or how about typing papers or letters? There was a time where I tried using the PSP to post on forums and it got old fast just trying to type one sentence. Considering the number of threads we've have about the keyboard I wonder if it feels like you at any point want to just plug in a USB keyboard or if you feel like it'll be second nature after while if not already.

The entirety of my review in the first post was written on the Pandora alone, except for when I added the edits and the photographs later, if that helps.

Great review & pics Prometheus. I'd be a little miffed if I had a missing lightpipe, but I can see where you're coming from with the charm thing. Like Pikachu if he lost an eye in a freak boating accident.

I have sent them an e-mail now, to request what DaveC specified. Charming as it is, it's still a hole in the case. :lol: Now I'm just imagining Pikachu with an eye-patch.

 

[jlepley]

I bet if you stuck on some patch of clear plastic press-n-seal type of thing, that could keep foreign objects from getting in. I don't know how well something like that would stick though.

 

[SomeGuy99]

The entirety of my review in the first post was written on the Pandora alone, except for when I added the edits and the photographs later, if that helps.

As was mine. I think it should be made a tradition!

Was properly browsing the web today (at the library). Facebook, although lagging in places... actually worked! That's quite impressive really. I was on 8bitcollective downloading some chiptunes too - very easy to use.

My mate wasn't overly impressed that I had a full desktop OS and web browser in my hands. He liked the Pandora except for the keys.

 

[Jumpman]

I was going to post my first comments thru my Pandy, but sadly mine has a wifi/router issue where I need to type in a line of code everytime I need to use my wifi conection. Hopefully it will be addressed in the next update.

I'm so busy right now, I havn't been able to play with mine. 2 plus year wait, and I'm busy, go figure!

Chris

 

[ConsistentChaos]

Posting to announce receipt of Pandora today. Order placed 9/30/2008 at 1425 GMT. Finally holding it in my hands is a wonderful feeling. Excellent job, guys!

Now, let's see what this baby can do...

 

[DaveC]

Skeezix ,if there was a webrowser i could use in minimenu i am sure i would be using it more than the OS ,currently the web browser is only used to view read me documents ,so what we need is a browser suited to minimenu and the ability to play music/radio in the background ,this is the only reason i don't use it more but here is an idea below.


Can we have say booting into the os then running mini menu as an app and it can me minimised ? meaning i can open my media player/web browser or what ever i am doing at that time ,keep it all open and switch to minimenu when i want to run my games/emulators and sys cfg stuff then when i want to jump back to the os to change music or work on a document there is a minimise minimenu ,or even the option to run minimenu within the os and close mini menu and return to the current open session in the os.

that would be great stuff man.

The whole idea of mini menu was to not have all of the overhead of loading a full desktop. It takes longer to load so loading XFCE to load mini menu defeats the purpose of quick loading. We want to be able to fast load into mini menu and just get to your app. Doing this also will eliminate much of the framerate drops caused by background tasks running like you would get with the desktop. You can still get to XFCE through MM by going to the menu and loading XFCE.

 

[DaveC]

Skeezix ,if there was a webrowser i could use in minimenu i am sure i would be using it more than the OS ,currently the web browser is only used to view read me documents ,so what we need is a browser suited to minimenu and the ability to play music/radio in the background ,this is the only reason

Grab that file here:
http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,112,69

You can then use Arora with Minimenu.
Fennec should automatically appear in Minimenu anyways.

With the next hotfix, all XFCE-Programs should also appear in Minimenu

Hopefully not ALL xfce programs will appear. There is allot of system crap I don't want cluttering up the interface. Hopefully that could be shut off in an option.

 

[SomeGuy99]

I was going to post my first comments thru my Pandy, but sadly mine has a wifi/router issue where I need to type in a line of code everytime I need to use my wifi conection. Hopefully it will be addressed in the next update.

I'm so busy right now, I havn't been able to play with mine. 2 plus year wait, and I'm busy, go figure!

Chris

I couldn't get my WIFI working, so I wrote it in Mousepad. Give it a try!

Or if you want to be hardcore, fire up a terminal and type 'nano'. B)

The second option gets you 5000 geek points, to be spent in the afterlife. Points can buy you snacks or ride tickets, or even virtual reality machines (and trust me, you want to play those bad boys).

Oh, and running Vi or Emacs just means you're not cool. Even in the afterlife everybody avoids those types.

 

[skeezix]

Skeezix ,if there was a webrowser i could use in minimenu i am sure i would be using it more than the OS ,currently the web browser is only used to view read me documents ,so what we need is a browser suited to minimenu and the ability to play music/radio in the background ,this is the only reason i don't use it more but here is an idea below.


Can we have say booting into the os then running mini menu as an app and it can me minimised ? meaning i can open my media player/web browser or what ever i am doing at that time ,keep it all open and switch to minimenu when i want to run my games/emulators and sys cfg stuff then when i want to jump back to the os to change music or work on a document there is a minimise minimenu ,or even the option to run minimenu within the os and close mini menu and return to the current open session in the os.

that would be great stuff man.

The whole idea of mini menu was to not have all of the overhead of loading a full desktop. It takes longer to load so loading XFCE to load mini menu defeats the purpose of quick loading. We want to be able to fast load into mini menu and just get to your app. Doing this also will eliminate much of the framerate drops caused by background tasks running like you would get with the desktop. You can still get to XFCE through MM by going to the menu and loading XFCE.

Well, you can run Arora etc from minimenu; I made a pnd that just runs the already present Arora, but you have to bring up your network likely; ED is working on some basic pnds to run other stuff as well, thats already in the system.

Minimenu will exit while the other app is present, however, so when you run a browser, you get to browse; to run something else, you kill the browser, and minimenu comes back up; thats what its for, as DaveC notes -- its a one at a time approach to using the system; nice and fast, good for gaming or other single purposes.

Adding multiple apps at once suddenly means it has to know how to juggle apps and all that, at which point you might as well run a full DE (desktop), like xfce (there are many, xfce is not the only one.)

*shrug*

jeff

 

[WizardStan]

Or if you want to be hardcore, fire up a terminal and type 'nano'. B)

echo my review goes here > my_review.txt