How are we going to make a lot of money?

[xiongxioi]

The strenght of the Pandora is its community and its openness, nothing more, nothing less. But this comes at a price, the price that you will never get an uniform look and feel or any consistancy in it. People are drawn to it, because they can basically do what they want, so if they want to contribute they are probably deterred, if you tell them that their contribution needs to do this and that (or they just ignore you).


The price that the community can't exceed a certain size otherwise it will become too unpersonal, and less people will be attracted by its "spirit".


The price that a lot of contributors will not polish their software to the end, as motivation is their only impetus, not company planned development and money


etc.

What does stay a certain size have to do with boosting sale numbers? It is not likely that any member will be willing to buy 2 or 3 pandoras.

Sure it's attracting a lot of talented people, but so does Ouya, and GCW. What pandora has and they don't is: pandora has better features.

I doubt smart people are like ghosts that would not stay in a crowded place. Sure, if the community gets bigger, it's average quality will be dragged down.

But that doesn't mean capable individuals will just disapear in thin air.

What makes Microsoft and Sony unpersonal is that, they are looking down on their consumers. They are pusing out the same generic tablet junk that can be made by anyone.

That silver lable of theirs don't worth that much. Why does Microsoft trying to push out new versions of Office and windows? Windows xp was good, and windows 7 is perfect.

Because they only cares about money. To them, a product is just investment. They put money to develop a product that no one wants, they will just force that into their customers' throats.

What makes pandora great is certainly its community, without people like notaz or exophase, pandora will not be the same as it is today.

However, there has to be a first person to eat a crab. Before pandora, there isn't a portable umpc that is designed for emulation. Without that initial concept, there will not be pandora. There won't be this community we all loved today.

People were saying how impractical it was back then, but they are all silenced now.

If ED want, he can pull this out again. give the community something that's truly unique.

If you are still insisting that making a new UI is hard, well it is hard, but it is doable. There is no need to write it from scratch. Our community is filled with emulation expert, but who is you to say there aren't any GUI experts out there?

Sure it is hard, but everything is. PCSX-rearmed is nothing but a miracle, but it exists. It's challenging, but was it worth the effort? Yes it was. It's the only thing that puts pandora above android even to this day.

If it is so easy that every one can do it, then we will have it already, but so will those Chinese $100 knock-offs. The truth is: you avoided the true question. It is hard but possible, but is it worth it?

If you need more insight, then lets go back to 2007, 2008. At that time, even smooth snes emulation were seemed impossible to achieve. GP2X's hardware could only do that much, and there weren't any powerful ARM machines that were on the market. If it was not Craigix who had some seemingly crazy concepts in mind when he was putting Pandora together, Pandora would just be a beefed up GP2X. It will not have full keyboard, mouse, sub hd screen and dual nubs. It was difficult, and never had been done before. But once the prototype was finished, people were hyped. Thus, the community was formed.

You can say pandora don't need this, don't need that all day long. But ambition is what shaped pandora, and formed this community. You can't deny this, and you can't argue how that is different from this.

It is hard, but is it  worth it?

Would people demand a UMPC that have not only spot-on emulation utilities, but also is perfect for office usage? Or would they just want another pandora but with much more powerful soc?

The only reason that keeps people surrounding me from buying a pandora is: it's price is too high for a toy. It can't do anything besides emulating old hardwares well.

To most people who are interested, pandora is too pricy for the functionality it provides. If P2 can be given a bit more polish, it will become much more attractive.

I'm not saying pandora will die if it doesn't improve. Even if ED's making a A9 pandora 2, I will buy it for sure. But many other community members will not. Because the original is good enough.

P2 will inevitably compete with its predecessor. It has to have some killer apps to make even its dear community move on.

 

[levi]

If the next product has a bit more NAND flash, ED could pay for a few apps to be polished off to make them easier to set up and a bit slicker to use, and include them in the OS image. I'm thinking of core stuff that's already quite slick, like PNDManager, or SystemMonitor.

 

[xiongxioi]

If it's so easy could you please make a new UI for the Pandora?


I like the current one a lot but love playing around with different UI's.

I love your sarcastic attitude.

Let me ask you a question. Before Notaz write his PCSX-rearmed, how was PSX emulation on pandora? Totally trash. Psx4all was awful.

Only now it seems so easy to play crash bandicoot at full speed on pandora. But was it easy to do?

The only reason Notaz made that is because Pandora was advertised to be the ultimate emulating machine.

Android still don't have a decent psx emulator the last time I checked, except for the ported over pcsx-rearm.

It was extremely challenging, and yet Notaz and exophase pulled it out.

My sense of easy means highly possible comparing to thatgui's "ps2 emulation" analogy. Ps2 emulation is borderline impossible, yet writing a new gui has been done before even for pandora itself.

Comparing the effort notaz and exophase spent in pcsx-rearmed to the result, can you say it is well worth it? Or will you suggest that Pandora don't need this level of emulation proficiency and their works is a waste.

Nothing worth doing is easy. If the reward is good enough, then the effort and money spent are well spent. 

That's just my opinion though. Many would argue that pandora is well worth its salt at its current stage. yet these people are the one who already have spent a fortune on pandora.

What if ED makes Pandora 2 coming out next year? With better emulation power and nothing more. We may play Diablo 2 on pandora 2, but is diablo 2 worth another 600 bucks since you already have pandora, and P1 can do most other jobs fine? I don't know, that's why I need you opinions. I need everyone in this thread to contribute, give me some logical think from all perspectives. Don't just say if it works for the first time, the lightning will strike again at the same spot. 

 

[xiongxioi]

If the next product has a bit more NAND flash, ED could pay for a few apps to be polished off to make them easier to set up and a bit slicker to use, and include them in the OS image. I'm thinking of core stuff that's already quite slick, like PNDManager, or SystemMonitor.

The real question is: most of the community members have already got their pandora. (Craigix still has a large number of angry customer though).

Will the most people buy pandora again?

Just by making P2 a bit better doesn't automatically make people jump all over the place.

Let's say, there are about 100k people who has got their pandoras. (ED's ship number was 50k, but I would assume a optimistic situation.)

So, pandora 2 has 4 cores, each core has twice the processing power (equivalent to 1.6 ghz A15, which is a bit more efficient than A8). But most the time, it will run at around 1 ghz at most, or the battery will be dried with a hour.

P2 has the same kind of keyboard as ICP 2, which is great, and has better buttons all around. It will take wifi signals just like all modern electronics, and can emulate most windows 98 era programs.

Will a third of this 100k people in this small community buy a p2? (plz consider things have changed greatly, android has became more and more attractive, and many of the community members can no long afford a new pandora) Will many outsiders get interested and pay 600 bucks for it? (these are the people who don't regard P1 as worthy)

I would like to know, honestly.

Me and other pandora fanboys/ fangirls, will happily buy it. But will P2 be as successful as P1? Will it sell even half of the number as P1?

Not very possible. If telecommunication companies don't provide plans that give away new iphone models, who will buy iphones again and again every year?

Apple fanboys are much less rational than Pandora's user group, even them will not all pay for an upgraded Ipad with their own pocket money.

 

[Mr_Loon]

Glad you were not offended by the sarcasm, the thing is that making a good UI for a mini computer is not in any way easy in any accepted definition of the word, look at some recent UI screw ups from big players like Windows 8 on non touch screen hardware. Look at how much effort was put into mini menu, it did not just appear overnight, trust me.

I fully agree though that making a better UI would be easier than PS2 emulation on A15, however I strongly doubt that the people who might work on emulation of things like Dreamcast / PS2 on P2 would be the same people who would work on the UI.

From my perspective I'd like to see P2 be compatible with PNDs 'out of the box' and largely compatible with the current Pandora UI's. These UI's would then hopefully be developed and improved over time.

 

[xiongxioi]

I fully agree though that making a better UI would be easier than PS2 emulation on A15, however I strongly doubt that the people who might work on emulation of things like Dreamcast / PS2 on P2 would be the same people who would work on the UI.

Notaz and Exophase were there the same day Pandora prototype was finished. So did many others(most of them are gone by now though).

I think they were informed and requested for help by Craigix even before that.

Most of them were pretty active in forums like GP2X, so, craigix knew where to find these gentlemen.

If we have this planned, we can do it again. Go ask help from some talented people. Even if only a few of them are interested, we still have a good chance of expanding our community.

The problem with our community as a whole is that, our community is very one dimensional. Pandora can emulate PSX at twice the resolution, and can play most DS games, but it can't recieve emails and view websites well. (I'm not saying not enough effort has been put in, what I'm suggesting is that we lack other types of specialists.) This greatly limits the potential of Pandora.

I have no doubt that P2 will be able to play most of the windows 98 era games smoothly, and there may be even a sega dreamcast or sega saturn emulator. But, I'm not certain our community is capable of making a decent UI.

It may be wise to invest a bit of money on it at the prototype stage while expand our community during this process. I can't be certain, but this is one way to make P2 attractive.

 

[Klumpen]

I have no doubt that P2 will be able to play most of the windows 98 era games smoothly, and there may be even a sega dreamcast or sega saturn emulator.

Dreamcast sure,

but the chances for Playstation 2 or GameCube are bigger than for Sega Saturn, I think.

What problems are there with eMail and surfing?

Claws Mail works fine and so does Firefox besides the other browsers.

If you got a Classic or Rebirth Pandora, just set it to OPP4 or OPP5, overclock it a bit and it runs well enough.

Youtube is still a big problem though.

And the user interface (XFCE) is exactly how I want it,

I do not use the Minimenu, because it is not practical if you got many applications installed.

 

[levi]

As Mr Loon says, making an emulator at least has a defined end goal - make existing game run well. Admittedly, stuff like the hi-res 3d stuff is above and beyond that, but I guess that was an interesting technical challenge. Designing a functional, accessible and pretty UI is a less well defined problem. Generally, firms that do this have different people designing UIs to those coding them, since the skillsets to do either are quite radically different.


I do agree that ED needs to do something though to make the P2 attractive beyond it being the Pandora plus. Many of the people waiting for their Pandoras waited so long that they found other ways to do what they wanted, so new customers need to be attracted to offset those that have wandered. Of course, just making it cheaper and prettier to look at might be enough, but it's hard to say.

 

[xiongxioi]

As Mr Loon says, making an emulator at least has a defined end goal - make existing game run well. Admittedly, stuff like the hi-res 3d stuff is above and beyond that, but I guess that was an interesting technical challenge. Designing a functional, accessible and pretty UI is a less well defined problem. Generally, firms that do this have different people designing UIs to those coding them, since the skillsets to do either are quite radically different.

My Ideal os would be one that I can get to my favourite part with as few clicks as possible. Doesn't need to be all pretty.

For example, If I set e-mail to be the first tab, then on the bottom of that tab, a list of emails will be shown clear as day. All I need is one click to read, another to reply or forward.

If another tab is set to be Nes emulator, then I can see all the roms I've been playing directly underneath, and there will be a search function if i want to find some thing in particular. Showing snapshots would also be greatly appreciated, but that is asking for too much.

I know next to nothing about programming but if we can set up some kind of universal launcher for all emulators and document processors, it should be doable.

The thing with mini menu and XFCE is that, I can see all the apps, but I have no idea what contents they hold. I have to open them up to do anything. That's a bit distracting.

 

[Mr_Loon]

A quick note on the size of the Pandora community, as far as I know there are approximately 5000 Pandoras in the wild, how many individual active users who knows?


Not sure where you got 100k from.


Not trying to be picky but when considering the topic it is a highly relevant fact.

 

[ekianjo]

A quick note on the size of the Pandora community, as far as I know there are approximately 5000 Pandoras in the wild, how many individual active users who knows?


Not sure where you got 100k from.


Not trying to be picky but when considering the topic it is a highly relevant fact.

Probably less than 1000 active users, with about 100 i would call very active. I have no data to back this up apart from my overall perception of the forum and repo activity.

 

[thatgui]

What does stay a certain size have to do with boosting sale numbers? It is not likely that any member will be willing to buy 2 or 3 pandoras.

But isn't it very likely that a boost in sale number will lead to a boost in forum member numbers ?

Sure it's attracting a lot of talented people, but so does Ouya, and GCW. What pandora has and they don't is: pandora has better features.

...

People were saying how impractical it was back then, but they are all silenced now.

If ED want, he can pull this out again. give the community something that's truly unique.

But the market is different nowadays. Back then the Pandora had no problem occupying the niche it now has. But with Smartphones everywhere, Android beeing a "nobrainer" and the rise of products like the ICP2 you simply can't compare both situations.

If you are still insisting that making a new UI is hard, well it is hard, but it is doable. There is no need to write it from scratch. Our community is filled with emulation expert, but who is you to say there aren't any GUI experts out there?

Sure it is hard, but everything is. PCSX-rearmed is nothing but a miracle, but it exists. It's challenging, but was it worth the effort? Yes it was. It's the only thing that puts pandora above android even to this day.

If it is so easy that every one can do it, then we will have it already, but so will those Chinese $100 knock-offs.

So what now ? Is it easy or is it hard, but doable ? And what is next "maybe doable" ? And don't forget you wanted to "out do" other big players in the market, so a slapped together UI won't help in that case. This is not 2008, people are used to streamlined, coherent userinterfaces, which is something you won't achive in a comparable scale with community work - just look at all the different UIs that the various emulators have.Sure there are very talented people in this community but they aren't a given thing. There maybe some "guy experts" out there (why haven't they shown up yet, are they waiting for the P2?), but that isn't something you can count on and it sure isn't something Ed could rely on while planing the P2.

I also doubt you can compare developing emulators and developing Uis. Part of my every day life is implementing UIs and while most of the time it is interesting and/or challangeing, it often is just boring "gruntswork" as you don't implement anything interesting, but just try to think of what the user can do wrong, and prevent it - not very motivating work.

The truth is: you avoided the true question. It is hard but possible, but is it worth it?

...

You can say pandora don't need this, don't need that all day long. But ambition is what shaped pandora, and formed this community. You can't deny this, and you can't argue how that is different from this.

...

What question, what denial are you talking about ? All you posted till now was platitudes with no real value: "If we improve the Gui the Pandoras sales will rise". Thats big news, glad someone finally put it out.

 

[ekianjo]

So what now ? Is it easy or is it hard, but doable ? And what is next "maybe doable" ? And don't forget you wanted to "out do" other big players in the market, so a slapped together UI won't help in that case. This is not 2008, people are used to streamlined, coherent userinterfaces, which is something you won't achive in a comparable scale with community work - just look at all the different UIs that the various emulators have.

"People are used to coherent userinterfaces?" 

I almost choked on that one ! LOL thanks for providing some comic relief. 

I guess you never used Android ? There are tons of applications who don't look like each other at all, not only in terms of overall design but even in terms of controls. Currently you are as far as possible from "coherent user interfances", except maybe on Apple-made applications, but even that's a tiny part of the market of all apps. 

Note that we do have frameworks on Pandora to make things more consistent - like Picklelauncher. Many applications already use it. But not all. Besides, we also have Pandafe that can be used as an universal launcher for tons of things. It's not like we have nothing. 

Honestly I don't have any issue with the UI on Pandora. Sometimes I feel it could be better depending on the program, but overall it's fairly usable and I use keyboard shortcuts as much as I can. 

You can't have a free, open system, and consistent UI across the spectrum. That's what Freedom is about. 

 

[thatgui]

I almost choked on that one ! LOL thanks for providing some comic relief. 

I guess you never used Android ? There are tons of applications who don't look like each other at all, not only in terms of overall design but even in terms of controls. Currently you are as far as possible from "coherent user interfances", except maybe on Apple-made applications, but even that's a tiny part of the market of all apps.

Hmm at least they have a unified framework (i.e. UI mechanics) every application implements. What do we have, that is consistent over all applications/games ? Maybe the functionality of the Pandora button, something else ?

Note that we do have frameworks on Pandora to make things more consistent - like Picklelauncher. Many applications already use it. But not all. Besides, we also have Pandafe that can be used as an universal launcher for tons of things. It's not like we have nothing.

I know that, but while Picklelauncher is nice, it has its own set of rules how the user should interact with it, and they are totally different to what the rest of the available pnds has to offer (or the UI you use to start them). Pandafe is also nice, but both Picklelauncher and Pandafe are designed to provide emulator specific interaction to the user, which can't be applied to a lot of other application types. But I guess thats an antagonism that is "Pandor-inherent" as melting both worlds together (desktop and mobile usage patterns) without loosing on one side, is probably impossible.

Honestly I don't have any issue with the UI on Pandora. Sometimes I feel it could be better depending on the program, but overall it's fairly usable and I use keyboard shortcuts as much as I can.

But I guess you were determined to that - something we can not expect from most new customers.

You can't have a free, open system, and consistent UI across the spectrum. That's what Freedom is about.

exactly

 

[ekianjo]

Hmm at least they have a unified framework (i.e. UI mechanics) every application implements. What do we have, that is consistent over all applications/games ? Maybe the functionality of the Pandora button, something else ?

Yes we have menus in application most of the time, at least on anything that uses Qt, GTK, Wxwidget or even Tk it's fairly similar. Of course there are paradigms that people are already using. It's not like every application is reinventing the wheel. Emulators are bit different because they are made to be simple front-ends for launchers. So there's some lack of uniformity here, but if you dislike that then you have the Emu EX Alpha series of emulators which look exactly the same from one emulator to the next. 

But in the end, It does not matter. Do we need it ? I'd say "not really". Not more than on linux or Windows desktops. 

But I guess you were determined to that - something we can not expect from most new customers.

In case this is not obvious to you at this stage, the Pandora is and will remain a niche device (even for its successor) just because it's a swiss army knife of a device that can do just everything. It's a general purpose computer. Most people don't want general purpose computers in their pockets. They want a simple smartphone to play games and use a few apps or a simple tablet to play games and use a few apps and a browser. That's it. 

I'm not saying you cannot increase the sales of the Pandora successor at all, but anyway for many, many reasons, it will remain a small scale project. And it's probably better this way, because the Pandora community would not scale very well if you have 10 times more members, for example. You would get a lot of users asking stupid questions with zero knowledge (just like you get on Android forums), a lot of stuff to moderate, painful customer support because of these people who can't bother reading a manual by themselves or looking stuff online, and a lot more returns for reason X or Y. 

What's good with the current community size is that you can get to know almost everyone who really matters in the community, and interact relatively frequently with them and have a chance to be heard. It's like a small village. And you get lots of interesting ideas because of that virtual proximity.

"We need to get more people on board" is the wrong way to look at things, imho. 

The real point is " how can we make this community - and this device - even better? Do we really need to sell 10 times more ? Or are there other priorities for us to feel happy about it?"

 

[thatgui]

But in the end, It does not matter. Do we need it ? I'd say "not really". Not more than on linux or Windows Desktops.

 

In case this is not obvious to you at this stage, the Pandora is and will remain a niche device (even for its successor) just because it's a swiss army knife of a device that can do just everything. It's a general purpose computer. Most people don't want general purpose computers in their pockets. They want a simple smartphone to play games and use a few apps or a simple tablet to play games and use a few apps and a browser. That's it. 

I'm not saying you cannot increase the sales of the Pandora successor at all, but anyway for many, many reasons, it will remain a small scale project. And it's probably better this way, because the Pandora community would not scale very well if you have 10 times more members, for example. You would get a lot of users asking stupid questions with zero knowledge (just like you get on Android forums), a lot of stuff to moderate, painful customer support because of these people who can't bother reading a manual by themselves or looking stuff online, and a lot more returns for reason X or Y. 

What's good with the current community size is that you can get to know almost everyone who really matters in the community, and interact relatively frequently with them and have a chance to be heard. It's like a small village. And you get lots of interesting ideas because of that virtual proximity.

"We need to get more people on board" is the wrong way to look at things, imho. 

The real point is " how can we make this community - and this device - even better? Do we really need to sell 10 times more ? Or are there other priorities for us to feel happy about it?"

While I wholeheartedly agree to most of what you are saying - I think it is a good idea to target a broader audience - not in terms of a 100k unit target, but I guess 10k to 15k could be possible, and the P2 could really benefit from it. Like attracting more constructive users (programmers, "supporters", "community managers", etc., not only naggers like me) and giving Ed a bit more of financial "space" (competition, advertisement, maybe even some contract software work).

 

[ekianjo]

Maybe. But if you reach 15k i doubt ED could still handle the operations the same way. And scaling up the production is another big question mark, unless buyers are fine with waiting.

 

[xiongxioi]

While I wholeheartedly agree to most of what you are saying - I think it is a good idea to target a broader audience - not in terms of a 100k unit target, but I guess 10k to 15k could be possible, and the P2 could really benefit from it. Like attracting more constructive users (programmers, "supporters", "community managers", etc., not only naggers like me) and giving Ed a bit more of financial "space" (competition, advertisement, maybe even some contract software work).

So, what is you conclusion? Where's your suggestion to achieve your "target a broader audience"? I find you to be very rude and unimaginative, because you are stating the "obvious" and yet you are in total denial of the true nature of the problems we are facing when making a new device. You need to stay back and look at this matter objectively, and tell everyone what's your ideas to make pandora better. Not just sit there and say everything is stupid, and you are the smart person here.

As I've mentioned a few times now, the big problem pandora 2 has is: it has a small target market. Nearly all people who give a damn about retro gaming and are financially sound enough have already got at least one pandora.

Pandora's already filled their needs well. It plays most roms up to N64 smoothly. Even if you make a better pandora that have 8 times the processing power, there is no driving incentive for most people to get it.

Let's view this topic from a third person perspective.

Pandora 2 has better keyboard, a 4 core cpu and its single core performance is twice the power of a 1ghz pandora, it has no memory problem and can playback 1080p vidos on youtube. P2 can emulate up to Dreamcast and windows 98 era programs, and supports the most recent MAME pack. (version 1.49) Powerful yet, pandora 2 will be out of power within 3 hours if very intensive programs are used.

That I would say as a realistic assumption. That's as good as pandora 2 will be if it is to be prototyped this year.

So, to get the production started, ED starts to crowd funding. He would need at least 2000 pandoras to make the initial run very profitable.

People like me, and many others who love pandora to the death will happily spend 600, 700 on it. Because we trust ED.

But that's just some of the active members in this forum. Let's say there are 200 of us (I doubt there will be this many) would pre-order P2 without a second thought.

So, how will ED persuade the other 1800 people to spend their money on a 600 machine that has not yet been made and does not provide a much better experience than P1?

Stop evading this question, and give me your ideas, if you have any in that brain of yours, clever man.

What is it that makes P2 special that we have to have one? Don't tell me android support will do the trick, because meI and many others hate android to the guts. Not to mention you can get a android tablet for as little as 100 bucks in today's market.

Before you starts to shout at me and say: " you don't have any ideas either, so why are you asking me" such and such like a 12 years old. This thread is made to show my suggestions to make P2 competent. A better user experience is what I think could be important in today's market. (Just look at the direction that everything is heading towards) If you are truly full of delightfulness that is ready to burst out of your chest, then tell us. Or if you haven't think about the issue yet and is only here to prove you are clever, then you can start to brainstorm now. It's never too late. May be all will be shocked by your revelation.

 

[FaeMinx]

I have an idea! Provide a free pair of used ladies underwear with every P2! We'll sell millions... :>

Sent from my GT-N5100 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[Mr_Loon]

I have an idea! Provide a free pair of used ladies underwear with every P2! We'll sell millions... :> Sent from my GT-N5100 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Should sell well in Japan anyway, at least according to urban myth that is

___________________________________

@ xiongxioi : Your topic question is : How are we going to make a lot of money? As stated earlier it is my opinion that in your OP you correctly identified a fundamental point relating to the financial aspect of the P2 project.

The thing is any discussion around 'How are we going to make a lot of money?' is so much hot air unless we can agree what constitutes a lot of money, what the target user base for P2 is (how many units do OP GmbH plan to sell), what sort of figure should the device be sold for.

So for arguments sake lets say

A lot of money is : Enough money to cover all expenses, pay a reasonable wage for time spent, pay off investors, invest in future product development, provide significant rewards for voluntary software / firmware work, and perhaps have a little bit left over to buy a few obscure Japanese RPGs from eBay.

Target user base is : 10,000 units sold

Target sale price : $650 delivered (current retail price of 1Ghz Pandora is approx $750 delivered)

Here are a few things I'd do (and have already posted about in the P2 spam section) in terms of hardware to make a lot of money :

Place the PCB in the lid and make the lid detachable from the base as that brings far more advantages than disadvantages

Make the case design open so people can take advantage of 3D printing to customise their P2 to their needs (Barcode scanner for warehouse management, midi / line in / out for musicians etc)

Insert a 5 by 5 array of mini LEDs in the gaming buttons so the display on the buttons could be altered to reflect the nature of the software being used

Include a standard tripod connector in the base of P2, this opens up many interesting usage scenarios for very little added cost.

It's appreciated that a few of these ideas really ruffled the feathers of some of the armchair iconoclasts who inhabit these boards (those who get pleasure from hating tablets / android / things that appeal to noobs and also loving the things spurned by the majority, such a linux only mini laptop) I should know, I'm a bit of an armchair iconoclast myself.

With that in mind try and shelve your personal antipathy towards Android and answer the following question : If P2 ran Linux out of the box what would you lose if it also ran a fully functional version of Android?

Here is what it would gain : Sales. There are 10's of millions of people who really like Android I bet OP GmbH could find a few thousand of them who would be willing to spend $650 on the unique proposition of a mini Android Laptop with built in Hardware controls if the Spec was competitive when compared to existing hardware.

There are also plenty of people like me who would also see the inclusion of Android as really adding value to the proposition of buying a P2 due to existing familiarity of the Android OS and investment in the Android software ecosystem.

PS : Calm down dear, I'm pretty sure that Thatgui meant no offence.