How has it evolved, should I rebuy?


scippie

scippie

Member
Joined
Dec 22, 2010
Messages
42
Hi,

Several years ago, I was one of the first ones to receive a pandy. It was a black one that felt a little unfinished, it had 10 hours of battery, standby or not (I was the one that opened discussion on that point and I am glad they listened), and it lacked a finished OS for people who didn't want to hack their way through the system to just play great old games.

So after toying with it, I really got annoyed with it (especially because of the battery life on standby) and I sold it to never return to this forum again.

A week ago, I came back to see if anything had changed. It seems a lot has happened, the color has changed to gray, UK office has dissapeard, standby has gone to 1 week, CPU went to 1+Ghz. Except for the UK problem, I like what has changed.

So at this point, I am really interested in buying the 1+Ghz version again. I would prefer buying a Pyra, but that seems to be something for in about 2 years or even longer. Even if a first version will come out, I will not buy it because with the first pandy, I discovered that I am not that kind of guy anymore (I used to be) that likes to hack his way through.

Can anyone tell me how the rest of the device has evolved. Especially the software that "comes with it". I just want to have 100s of games at my fingertips, ready to play without having to hack my way through, controls configured, etc. Meanwhile, I would love to read my mails on it (with software like thunderbird, not a web interface), watch video's on it (from a network share), write documents in open office and play some music.

So is the user interface now easy to use, is it now easy to install hunderds of old games on it and will they work without hacking, trying for hours to get the controls right, etc...

I remember that I hated those things the most, finding the games was already difficult at times, but then getting them to work right...

Also, I am wondering if I am buying an outdated device if I would buy a new one. Smartphones and tablets now have duo/quad core cpu's, they support opengl-es 3, etc... none of those things matter for playing old games of course, and maybe they don't matter for reading email, watching video, ...

So... honest opinions are appreciated. Should I buy one of the last pandy's available?
 
scippie said:
So after toying with it, I really got annoyed with it (especially because of the battery life on standby) and I sold it to never return to this forum again.
Click to expand...
This was fixed a long time ago.. usually if fully charged I can be on standby for over a week and still have a good amount of charge.

Honestly the interface hasn't changed much, it's a XFCE4 standard Linux desktop environment or the minimenu minimal interface, openbox another lightweight desktop environment, but not too different than XFCE4 if you choose to install that as well. 

Software is where things got a ton better, we have Thunderbird, Libreoffice and a ton of other great game ports on the repo thanks to community members stepping up.  


It's up to you on buying, the Pyra will be the successor, but the Pandora still has a bit of life left in it, plus it will be a unique collectors item for sure.
 
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afaik, early Pandora had tons of small, strange, bugs in the system. If these are what you're referring to, they seem to be pretty much gone now (I never had any issues myself, allthough I bought it February this year so I don't know fully how the early days were).

There's PND Manager, a much better package management UI compared to the old one (or so I've heard).

The actual desktop is still the same, as mentioned (XFCE4, or openbox if you prefer that, or minimenu), but it feels a lot more polished compared to what I've seen on early videos. The same applies for a lot of the applications, I've seen some videos of people having to deal with a very clunky mupen64plus UI for instance, or early UAE4ALL, which isn't the case anymore.

Emulator compatibility is also far better for a lot of the systems if you're into that. There's also a lot of new games since in the repositories, everything from ports (Starcraft, Minecraft, VVVVVV from desktop and clones like Flappy Bird and Squared! - i.e. 2048 - from phones) to original games (NubNub!).

Also, there's a very nice, fast and 100% smooth browser available now if you didn't like the slowness of Firefox - Qupzilla - and some others.

There's also Thunderbird/Libreoffice as mentioned.

For streaming videos, I don't know what is on the repos - but this is because I never did it myself, there is probably a few applications for that (XBMC is in repositories if that's the sort of thing you want).
 
OMG! I hadn't checked out the repo yet. The list of games is huge (for such a small community I mean)!!!

Still so remarkable how such a small team has been able to get this kind of community support!

And with all the emulators, the number of games is probably 1000s more.

You also make a good point about the "collector's item" :)

The slow browser was indeed also an issue. Great that this also has been improved.

Thanks Trashy and FIQ for the interesting answers.
 
Flash videos are abysmal at best on the web browser, however for playing youtube videos on the Pandora I like: The Tube 
 
I usually only play video's that are on my network (NAS). I assume setting up network shares is the same as on any linux based system? Or does the pandy have limitations?

The video formats are usually divx, xvid, mkv, sometimes with .srt subtitles. Will these work and is there a good video player available?
 
scippie said:
I usually only play video's that are on my network (NAS). I assume setting up network shares is the same as on any linux based system? Or does the pandy have limitations?

The video formats are usually divx, xvid, mkv, sometimes with .srt subtitles. Will these work and is there a good video player available?
Click to expand...
divx,xvid encoded mkv's should be fine and I often stream them on my Pandora from my NAS storage as well. I have the best luck with SMPlayer2. However any videos encoded with x264 or h264 will not play well due to a lack of a decent decoder.
 
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Buy a second-hand one, there are posts of sellers. Start putting money aside to buy a Pyra (which is actually what you want).

No need for a 1Gh, as a CC overclocked to 850 should be enough too. (unless you want to play 2Gb big video files, in that case, 1Ghz is recommended)

I dl youtube videos on my main computer, then view them with VLC on the pandora.

I have no experience with watching video over wireless. I just put it on the SD card.

You have kids, so that means you will like the fact you can just flick a switch, close it and it goes 2 seconds into hibernation, and takes 2 seconds to come out of it. It keeps playing where it left off.

My daughter actually watches cartoons on it. Sometimes plays a game.

let me tell you this. Have you ever bought a computer, top of the line, with only windows on it, but all it does is notepad and minesweeper, and it feels like empty, with no functionality? Now imagine the Pandora. 3 types of email clients (clawsmail, thunderbird, Sylpheed) a webdav software so you can also access your outlook server at work. A Gmail notifier. enough PIM's and calendar tools to test them out for ever, synchronization tools. Ability to charge your other devices through USB, with a GPS it becomes a navigator (navman), it can give you the first 1000 digits of square root and derive/integrate (lots of math and statistical software), want to note down your miles you drove and calculate how much gas the car is slurping? make a symlink on the desktop to gnumeric, its a touch screen, thus its litterarily at your fingertips.... oh... and it plays games. You name it... commodore 64? Atari ST? DOS games? Super Nintendo? Playstation? N64? 2DS? Android? Debian? MAME? yup, and much more, lots of native software, some things that have to be seen to believe (starwars). It even has a Game&Watch emulator! There are highscores that show on a webpage, many games support it.

Need to tune your guitar? Yup, there is working software for that. Want a database for passwords, or food, or look up bible verses? yup.

Want to format/repartition an external USB disk? yup. Want to connect a camera and record your video... sure.. not efficient, but it works.

Want to program in java, python, perl, C, scratch, sql, pascal, and many others and compile it too... yup.

Want to try out another linux os? (slackware, debian, android). Buy a cheap SD card, swap it out. Swap back, reboot, and voila... all your old applications are back within 15 seconds or so (I have lots of PND files, it takes a while to index them).

Do you like music? Great, it plays all the formats I know of. If you keep the video off, and no usb nor network, it will play music for 40 hours straight. Now, after a year of heavy usage, I still have 70% of the original charging power. (which is better than advertised.... as the capacity is actually 4300 iirc)

Want to control music it is playing, remotely? Well, you can.

Do you like ebooks? or getting them spoken out to you (Bard)....

and at some point we all have. Put it on your desktop and let it display the time full screen (3 good softwares for that). Or photobook. Or read manga, from a compressed zip file...

Others have hacked in lights (because you can control all the lights in software, and there are a few controllers you can connect to, should you want to tinker again). Or with the libreoffice you can convert that docx back to normal doc.

Oh and ssst, quiet, quiet... can you hear the fan cooling it? NO! It has no fan! It is quiet, no headaches because of background noise like fans! (well, it blasts out 8bit chiptunes when you play... just use a headphone, to not wake the missus)

and one thing I can not convey into words. You will need to have one to feel it. There is love in this little device. You will feel it when you just download from the repository, and play a game, created, compiled for this device.

I, for one salute you, past and future fellow Pandorian.
 
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FBnil said:
You name it... commodore 64? Atari ST? DOS games? Super Nintendo? Playstation? N64? 2DS? Android? Debian? MAME? yup, and much more, lots of native software, some things that have to be seen to believe (starwars).
Click to expand...
I think some of these would benefit from the extra ram and speed of the 1GHz model.  As far as I know 2DS games/emulators aren't running on Pandoras, as they are 3DS games without the 3D, but old DS stuff should be ok (I don't remember if 1GHz is recommended for that, though, but it wouldn't surprise me).  I didn't see anyone mention the Dreamcast emulator.
 
I can only speak for myself. I use my Pandora daily so much I bought two! I bought one when the first one broke... yeah. I can't live without mine.


I use mine as a media player and more importantly a typewriter. I write, and there's no other device proficient enough in portability and having a full blown office suite and a physical keyboard that's easy to use.,(starting to prefer it's layout then regular computers ) I've typed approximately 200 pages of stories on my pandoras. I finished and edited my first story on the Pandora 237 pages 52 chapters.. 37% of the story was done on a Pandora. For music it's a wonderful device. I lost my second Pandora earlier this week be wary of any tiny drop. My two Pandoras both had the screens go black. If yours is a 1ghz around serial numbers 887-895 be wary of falls.


Also after owning two.. not every Pandora is created equally some are slightly lesser quality then the others. Also if you pocket yours or type more then 10,000 words a dag expect the silver paint to disappear. Just food for thought... however they are making aluminum cases.. those are in the works!
 
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Wow, great answers, especially from FBnil who is probably a marketeer ;-)

I love the enthousiasm in here!
 
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