How are you going to use your Pandora?

[sold]

I'm hoping to be able to use this for nearly everything I do on my pc at the moment except for a few games and applications that need windows and the extra horsepower of a desktop.

 

[SyruM]

Mainly gaming for me, emulators being top of the list, then ports (quake etc etc) and finally homebrew games.

But basically love getting things like this and seeing what I can do with them, also maybe do some dev stuff with a group of poeple I knw

 

[mindlord]

The Pandora is an integral part of my plan for world domination. When not using it to enslave billions of people. I'll use it to:

• Play emulated games from the birth of video games up to and including everything the Pandora will emulate nicely, regardless of race, creed, amount of drugs taken during production, or system of origin.
• Play homebrew games from some of the finest and coolest homebrew programmers even seen in the scene. Chosen titles will be played regardless of race, creed, amount of drugs taken during production, or concept of origin.
• Utilize the Internet in any way exploitable. Thanks mostly to the abundance of wifi hotspots in my town. I will browse, voip, tunnel, stream, ping, gopher, FTP, usenet, IRC, RSS, and just about any other modern or historical Internet related acronym, or technobabble anyone wants to add to the damn near endless list of things people do to the Internet these days.
• Code... whatever... games or tools, whatever it is that I need that no one else wants.
• Flaunt my extreme geeknatude in front of all the foolish mortals who weren't savvy enough to pre-order one
• Listen to music everywhere to help drown out the voices in my head.
• Burn the Infidels with my USB flamethrower(TM).
• Watch TV and Cinema when I'm not too busy planning, gaming, Interneting, coding, or burning infidels.

 

[km2783]

quickish word-processing, web browsing, just whatever. some gaming via emulation or original/ported content. Pretty much treat it like an itty bitty umpc

 

[raytaller]

I'm not going to use it, like I did with my GP2X and my Openmoko Freerunner.
What I love is to think to what I will do with it, but when I have it, it will certainly stay next to its opensource cousins.

I usually think that I need technology to create great things, but of course the problem doesn't come from technology, it really comes from my laziness. So when I see that even with great new tools I don't make anything great, instead of thinking seriously about it, I start looking to the next version
More generally, when I own version N, I can't do anything because I need exactly what there is in version N+1 etc.

With pandora, I'm buying the hope of becoming someone, and this hope will stay until I receive the device. Then it will take about 2 weeks for me to realize that I can't do anything good with it (actually, I **could** technically since I'm a game programmer, it is rather a matter of motivation and self-discipline).

Then I may install and play some good old games on it, to forget that I'm nothing and that life sucks, in general.

 

[the_darkside_986]

To reply to an earlier question, Google's Chrome is open source but it is intentionally bloatware for Web 2.0 and lacks extensions, and is locked to the Windows platform so it is mostly useless. But a free software WebKit browser for small devices would be greatly appreciated.

On topic:
1) Development. Right now I develop things with SDL on the PC but hopefully they will compile straight away in the Pandora SDK. I hope to compile things on the Pandora itself and avoid having to use a toolchain constantly.
2) Rdesktop and VNC.
3) Music
4) Web browsing. But I need WebKit. Gecko is teh fail.
5) Videos? Don't need flash when there exist scripts to rip videos as long as Gnash is installed. But I might need Firefox for that.

 

[FireHazard51]

By in large purely gaming and a little bit of watching video's/anime .

I use my Conwon D2 for my music playing.

I use my Nokia n810 for internet, chatting, e-mail, and PMP.

If web browsing is faster in Pandora then I may switch. But I doubt it (not that I doubt it be faster, just me switching).

I'm going to be playing some video game on my Pandora, listening to music on my Conwon D2, and chatting/surfing the net on my Nokia n810 while I drink some coffee at a coffee shop.

The only thing that I'd really like to have that I don't yet is a e-book reader. Pandora and the Nokia n810 will be too small for that . And right now none of the e-books I like too much. I'm waiting for a better e-book reader to come out.

 

[Username]

The only thing that I'd really like to have that I don't yet is a e-book reader. Pandora and the Nokia n810 will be too small for that . And right now none of the e-books I like too much. I'm waiting for a better e-book reader to come out.

Now that you mention it, are there any open source PDF readers?

 

[Sphinxter]

Platform for my little 'art' projects. I'll be scrambling for the official sdk and toolchain.

 

[Ostsol]

Now that you mention it, are there any open source PDF readers?

KPdf, for KDE; EVince for Gnome; xpdf, for any platform that can run an xserver. . . Debian (and other Linux distributions) has ARM packages for all of these. Open-source readers for various ebook formats exist, too.

I didn't pre-order a Pandora -- and I regret missing that potential opportunity --, but I intend to be there for the next batch. I'll use the system for games, of course, ebook reading, and also as a portable development platform.

 

[Mime]

1. portable PS1
2. portable SNES
3. sketchbook (hopefully there will be a "colors" like application, or some other sketching app)
4. maybe some wi-fi internet browsing
5. homebrew games
6. hopefully lots of other things

 

[parox]

The main reason I preordered is because the PSP can't handle SNES and GBA at full speed, plus I just don't find it comfortable.

I'm very keen to try and hardware interfacing with the GPIOs. In particular I want to try and get the Dallas one wire temp sensor running.

I'll like to do some programming, but I suck at anything not Java.

I'd also be pretty happy if the ID stable of games were ported. I still really enjoy Doom, Quake, Hexen and the rest.

 

[Tobriand]

I'm expecting to use mine for note-taking in class (ideally, for recording a lecturer and taking time-indexed notes simultaneously, so notes are pegged at particular sentences), for PDA-like tasks in general, and for gaming.

For me, whilst gaming is the most important function Pandora will fulfil (I have other devices that *can* be used for note-taking - pen and pencil, for instance, and my phone for organiser-esque things), I suspect it will be the one I'll use least. I just don't spend enough time on busses and trains while at uni.

What I'm most excited about, though is probably netplay Worms Armageddon via psx emulation, or something similar. Worms rocked, but I could never find enough people to play against...

 

[Pleng]

I'm expecting to use mine for note-taking in class (ideally, for recording a lecturer and taking time-indexed notes simultaneously, so notes are pegged at particular sentences), for PDA-like tasks in general, and for gaming.

Sounds like a great idea!

Do you know if anybody took the idea on? Sinbad said he was working on an api. Does anybody know how far he got? And has anybody risen up to the challenge of a front-end?

 

[Drack]

Pretty much the common response.

Laptop replacement
Portable Emulation
Homebrew, open source games, and we'll see what commercial stuff gets ported/written for it too.
Development (c, assembler, java, maybe others) - I am interested in ARM assembler. I'll have to see how much the Pandora's ASM is different from the Nintendo DS's.
note-taking
Multimedia - Audio (think iPod), TV, Anime, Porn, Books
Music composing and arranging - this depends heavily on what software is available. I understand VSTs are out, but something that makes midis would be fine until I get to my desktop to flesh them out.
(maybe) VoIP - I already have a phone, and this would be a very clunky replacement. Being unavailable when not in wifi range is the big one.
(maybe) GPS - As this device has NO moving parts and is just the right size for a Carputer, the addition of a GPS module when in the car could make it quite the navigation device. Perhaps a bluetooth one powered by the car battery?
...Whatever else I find in the repositories that strikes my fancy...

 

[darkowl]

Uses for my pandora, well I would guess something like;

• Snes and GBA Emulators
• Internet
• Music
• Videos
• notes and possibly development (more likely to use my pc for this)
• Inkscape and GIMP (If I can)
• PSX

It's great little machine, so I look forward to getting it.

 

[Sphinxter]

First I'll probably dry hump the package a little.

 

[Flack]

01. Portable Emulation (C64, NES, SNES, Genesis, Amiga, Atari 2600)
02. Computer (mostly taking notes, copying data, watching movies, etc.)
03. MP3 player (100 hours on the battery? Woo!)
04. Carputer (mp3s, gps, and video)
05. EBook reader

 

[PoisonedV]

03. MP3 player (100 hours on the battery? Woo!)

 

[hede]

...
- TV
...
- Connecting to teamspeak at any time

TV? Ok, maybe some USB DVB-T stick or similar will work...
But teamspeak I think will be impossible. It's AFAIK closed source and there's only some x86 binary!?