Na-Noo -- I try to be impartial about things, as I have been doing mobile development (professionally and as a hobby) for >10 years now, with some highly successful products, and my great fun open source homebrew, etc. I like to think I can be critical and fair .. not being 'over hard' on something jsut cause I can, or to show people I can be tough something I'm working on, and not 'too soft' on something because its a pet, etc. So I like to think I can favourably compare gp2x, wiz, Pandora, and I will be honest. I will try not to 'lie through omission' and such. Over the long years I've been in this forum, people tend to think i'm pretty even handed when discussing PSP vs 2x, etc, so hopefully I'm succeeding. (Think of it like 'woman CEO' or 'woman cop' syndrome .. many peopel will think a woman cop tough to prove she can do it, or because being jaded by asshole men their whole career etc; I'm not a woman of course, but being a pandora devver might suggest to you I'll go easy or too hard on it, but I try to use the _metrics_ or say statements, or label an opinion when its an opinion.) Edit: In case you are curious -- something I learned.. when interviewing developers for hire/contract I figured out a principel of interviewing -- you do not record _impressions_ since that is of dubious value (if you read your notes later, what do they mean? of ir _others_ read them, what do they mean? Certainly, legality may come into play if someone takes oyu to court for hiring someone else and claiming you were racist or something..) -- you record the questions asked, and the statements made back, so that you may be objective later, and make references notes to those notes. You ask the same questions to all interviewed folks -- or only werigh in the questions asked to all candidates, as this is the only way to be fair. Notice the similarity with gadget reviews? I thought it an interesting observation
So for 'reviews' I will note what was observed, but for 'first impressions' and such, I figure I'm allowed to be gushier and 'seat of the pants'. I do try to consider such things when I post, but yeah, I'm mostly just a forum whore like everyone
All that said, I did not weigh in on the overclock discussion much, for those reasons -- I didn't do such comprehensive testing, when people were very sensitive about the topic, with a thermometer or whatever the 'industry'/community would require for real testing. I ran it overclocked like a mofo with a book on top (Neal Stephenson, so a thick ass book
, and it didn't barely feal warm to touch. But to be 'real' test, it should have temperatures taken with a therm stuck in the headp[hone jack or something (dunno?), with well defined paramaters (ambient temps, type of SD cards in slots, etc). So I didn't say much. It was an easy thing to do, and not something I put thought into .. 'hey, the forum is exploding, I'll just do this and see how it goes for myself'. I'm as much a post-whore as the next guy (if anyone thought I didn't notice it, you'd think me a fool. I write stuff for the joy of coding, and the 'dev arrow' .. getting it to where people enjoy it; so feedback and quick releases are mhy way, akin to the open source mantra. I don't like coding in a isolated room with releases once a year. So thats why I post so damned much, I like to keep a 'accurate target' through frequent feedback. I'm not a fool!) .. but I didn't want to weigh in on that otpic, as I'd just get flamed or cause trouble .. people will interpret or misinterpret every single thing you say in a forum, especially if you're Craig (who has pretty much given up to saying anything, knowing it'll be wildly flamed or over-dramatacized, and so I think he enjoys some of the mystery he now brings
The 'to the metal' rev2 pcb I have (red pcb, no case/nubs/keyb/etc) is a speed _demon_ -- barely an OS, just a kernel running on it, its goddamned fast, as I said a year or more back; with a full OS on the newer rev3 proto unit, its still a beast
But a few things are rough, as we've all been over .. the only real weak spots right now are wifi and video playback. A number of things could be improved, but that is always the way on all devices and I and others have gone over it all before. (and I've noticed things like, you can buy an Archos 5 with similar hardware, that is completely unworkable when purchased for some $500 or so! (until recent patches have made it useful), so Panda isn't the only one with growing pains
I did muck up one of my buttons on the device, but MW was already aware of and fixed that problem (was noted in the forums a few months back), and my LCD cable is a little funky (MW noted that as it was one o his first assemblies he mucked it up a little; as this is a proto case with alterations and before experience and such, I've not mentioned this much, but things seem ok. No one else has reported an issue so I consider it a my-proto-only thing.)
I've gone on before that I really ike the hardware -- davec's subtle design isn't function over form, but I like how it looks anyway.. even if it is a little brickish. If only it coudl be just a touch smaller (gee, its already one of or the smallest of all umpc's with a keyboard, and I want more
, but such is life and I noted that in the forum; the software _I think_ is great already .. I'm sure we're going to ship with a few little nits (I'd like to add some minimenu docs to the menus and xfce, but likely won't have time; I'd like to have an icon to run minimenu in xfce, but who knows. Little tiny stupid stuff like that theres lots of.) But I can fire it up .. I fire it up to my own mmenu right now, or to xfce (and mmenu can run xfce from within itself, easy enough.) I can play games, and we've got the new documentratin links I brought up a couple weeks ago working nice (yay, I like it myself
.. watching sensibly encoded videos works fine, mp3 playback is fine, PDF reader works great. I use the terminal/console quite a bit, and typing away on the keyboard is great (thumbs, not fingers). I've been building Kronos for IF/text-advents and it plays sweet. Quake3 is pretty damned good actually, despite being an early port.
So when you fire it up, its solid. Liek anything else -- 10% of the people will make 90% of the noise, and they'll make it look like the walls are falling down; they're not. So when you get your unit, you'll be 90% impressed, but a few forum peopel will scream like mad if Wifi isn't fully sorted out yet. But you know about that already, so I don't count it in comments I make -- I take it as given that video decoding is fiddly, and wifi is broken, so fine, I move on. (And hope thats fair, but I don't hide anything.) (Hell, if you transcode to a 320x200 type res liek a lot of devices and upscale, you'll have no problem. I'm talking 800x480 video here, thats hard for it to keep up with without hw.. so using sensible encodes, you're okay, no need to go tiny. Just don't go high def with touch codecs like h264
The screen isn't as good as a Wiz's (few are!); its also much larger and such, so a lot more for it to do.
And blah, how did I turn this into a reivew?
If you want, I can try to do an organized and considered 'had it a few weeks' review, rather than my 'holy wow!' inital impressions, but It hink I've gone over it before.
So yeah, fun hardware, pretty solid software with a lot of cool-ass stuff we built in, whats not to like?
As others have said -- if you back out, thats fine, but do it because you need the money or whatever. The device is damned well coming, we've put too much into it for it to stop
(And I say that from doing it all for free, since I'm a moron who believes in the damned thing, with hopes of making a few b ucks down the road if the guys whose mortgages rife on this actually make a penny back and feal generous
Suffice to say, when I signed up I 'wrote off' the cash, figuring at worst I'd likely get it back if everything flew apart, and at best I'd get something I've been wanting my entire life. I coudl afford the investment, and so its a worthy risk -- wicked-awesome gadget on one hand, or some amount of cash 'goes away for awhile, likely comes back' on the other. If you couldn't afford the bones, thats a different decision. After all this time, we're _nearly there_, and I'm still calling it wicked-awesome, and worth the wait.
jeff
edit: Mith, yes, currently I have a rev2 red-pcb thats been running more or less for >1 year since I got it; it is just a pcb and old-LCD. After allis said and done, maybe I shoudl try to get a case and keypad/etc for it to 'semi complete it', but for now it serves as a remote-login for testing apps while out and about. (ssh over usbnet.) the rev3-case proto with rev4 pcb I do most of my hacking/abuse on.
