I Thought More Shipments Of Pandoras Was Going Happen More Often....

[TitanUranus]

this is turning ridiculous, 30+ months waiting

this is simply not worth for the money. if you plan to web browsing on the go, just get an Android + Data Plan.

and for playing, NDS + backup cart will give you thousands of NDS and GBA games, even emulators

Believe me - I just got mine and it IS worth the wait. Unless you are living on borrowed time, WAIT (I can't believe how good it is, I was a bit scared cause of some people who'd reported build quality issues etc...). It more than meets my already high expectations. And I'm a picky anal type guy. If you can't wait, but can afford to upgrade then I recommend it. Ok, so it costs you more money, but it IS worth it.

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GUIDE TO UPGRADING FOR £5:

Look in your news papers sports page. Pick a few upcoming football/tennis/snooker matches that you know are going to win. Go to the local bookies, or an online one and place your money on the certain to win matches. When you get your winnings, repeat the process until you have enough money to upgrade and make a healthy donation to charity (and treat yourself to a curry as well).
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I hope my guide helps other people, it worked well for me, though I take NO responsibility for your gambling. Remember, speculative investments can go down the toilet.

 

[Prometheus]

this is turning ridiculous, 30+ months waiting

this is simply not worth for the money. if you plan to web browsing on the go, just get an Android + Data Plan.

and for playing, NDS + backup cart will give you thousands of NDS and GBA games, even emulators

But if my memory serves me correctly, you said that you got your Pandora last June. :blink:

 

[chame]

But if my memory serves me correctly, you said that you got your Pandora last June. :blink:

you are right. I speak from my experience with the artifact.

I had two main reasons to buy Pandora: emulation and use when travel

For the first one, I only admit 99% accurate emulation, not less. thats is up to neogeo, snes, gba, SCD and genesis (and below specs). didnt tried last psx emus, but in the version I tried the experience was awful. screen size is superb, controls are ok (nubs are unusable anyway even in ´good nubs´ units).
there are other alternatives, GBA-SP + cart, NDS (the big one) + cart, or even caanoo wiz etc, far cheaper and with availability. if you like retrogaming, youll be pleased with that combination

About the use of Pandora on the go as desktop, it is quite heavy for your pocket. it starts becoming slow when you open several applications (office+firefox+mplayer6+...), so use as desktop is limited in some way. wifi seems to be very unstable (even with fix4) and low range. so I need to admit that PC Desktop experience is far from optimal. mplayer drops frames even OC'ed and with SD video.
The big plus is battery (superb) and the use of complete versions of firefox and other aps (except for the lack of flash that im fighting with right now).
The big drawback comes from something not possible to get with the Pandora: 3G + Data Plan. when you are on the go you need internet somewhere and most of the times there are not wifi available, or it needs some kind of payment.

Iphone/Android with Data Plan offers you: cheap (or even free) hardware + internet access from EVERYWHERE and the terminals fit in your trousers pocket. its easy and you can buy them in your corners shop.

I was 1700+ in the list, and I joint one of the very first one nub oportunities. after almost one year experience with it, I think Pandora is a nice piece of hardware, but a bit outdated for todays needs. There are other alternatives for emulation, gaming, laptops etc. even if you plan to be a hardcore user, compiling and programing for the device, there are other linux based alternatives.

thats my opinion. If I were still waiting, I shall move to other thing...

 

[meandu229]

The big drawback comes from something not possible to get with the Pandora: 3G + Data Plan. when you are on the go you need internet somewhere and most of the times there are not wifi available, or it needs some kind of payment.

You could use a mobile wifi hotspot or a usb 3g dongle?

 

[chame]

The big drawback comes from something not possible to get with the Pandora: 3G + Data Plan. when you are on the go you need internet somewhere and most of the times there are not wifi available, or it needs some kind of payment.

You could use a mobile wifi hotspot or a usb 3g dongle?

usb 3G dongles require a data plan as well. so why to use an expensive Pandora + data plan, when android terminals are ofered for free with the data plan?

about wifi, I am quite disappointed with pandora´s one

 

[MonkeyChops]

I use my android for quick browsing but if I really want to surf, I just turn on the wifi hotspot of my phone and use my pandora. The pandora is a much nicer web browsing device than a phone is. I'm not sure what iphone/droid your getting for free but they all still cost a pretty penny (even with a huge contract) where I live. Besides, the pandora will never replace a phone and a phone will never replace a pandora. Each do their main jobs better than the other. The phone for making calls, and the pandora for playing emulators. You say droid is better, some say pandora is better, I say having both is best.

btw, if you don't like your pandora, I know someone who is looking. In all seriousness. pm me.

 

[LuvClub]

We were told that the intention of the Premium Pandoras was to prevent bottlenecks in the production of Pandoras and that First Batch orders would be sent out more quickly due to this.

Originally CC were churning out boards more quickly than they could be assembled by OP so the bottleneck was at the OP's side. The extra funds were therefore used to hire more staff on the production line.

Now, it seems as if CC themselves are the bottleneck. In this case shouldn't the extra funds received from Premium Pandoras be paid to CC, so that they could hire more staff/machines to speed things along?

As the extra money coming in from Premium Pandoras, as were initially told, were not supposed to profit or alleviate losses at OP then this should be the right thing to do. Please remember CC are also small fry just like Pandora.

 

[chame]

its obvious OPT has critical financial problems. we do not know actual numbers and money they already paid to providers (mobos, cases etc), and builders.

we know craig has a mortage over his house, so peoples early payment didnt cover total money needs. and mortage costs money, and Trichet just raised rates yesterday...

after two years there are barely 1k pandas out there, and many people shutting down asking for their money. again we do not know actual numbers, but they should be horrendous

in my opinion, all this stuff with premium is a desperate try to get funds, while waiting some kind of miracle to come

 

[BaDToaD]

its obvious OPT has critical financial problems

I'd be very careful about making assumptions like that if I were you.

 

[chame]

its obvious OPT has critical financial problems

I'd be very careful about making assumptions like that if I were you.

why?

 

[BaDToaD]

why?

Because someone new to the forums could take it as fact and there is no evidence to back up your claim. If it's isn't true then in the worst case it could be Slander. And in the best case it will do nothing but harm to OP.

 

[chame]

you are right. but negative opinions have the same right to be here than the positive ones, like "is worth the wait"

actually i feel more motivated to avoid people from preorder rather than helping OP with that

at this stage from my perception, there is HIGH RISK of project cancelation. all the excuses given to us are simple and common management problems, and these problems usually are expected to exist. they souldnt be presented to us as "surprise events".

there are new uers asking in the general forum about "posibility of getting a Pandora"
well, we are not making a favour to them replying "yes, just join and visit the blog for updates, it is worth the wait!"
we should tell people the truth:

- time delivery is UNKNOWN
- lag is more than 2 years
- there are people in the position 1000+ still waiting
- there exists all kind of problems (management, providers, quality, comunication, financial)
- this device is damm expensive, and there are other alternatives

 

[BaDToaD]

OP are doing there best to advise people of the problems they are facing. There have been three news posts in the last couple of weeks over at the official boards.

Official News

As for there being other alternatives to the Pandora. As one of the lucky few that have their hands on a Pandora I can say hand on heart that there is no alternative that would suit me personally. The Pandora is simply the best piece of kit I have ever owned. It does so many things so well that I hardly touch my laptop at all and my GBAs, NDS, Dingoo and GP32 have also hardly been touched since I got the Pandora. Add to that the fact that it fits comfortably in my pocket and has a huge battery life and you have the perfect handheld device IMHO

 

[chris_c]

I agree about the utility of the Pandora - many people site an android phone as an alternative not realising or conveniently forgetting that if used for emulation - assuming the phone can be over clocked like the Pandora can to the same level - that the battery life suffers terribly, some devices only getting 3-4 hours of use or *even* less when heavily used. Then how do you make a phone call? I have a nice semi smart phone I can tether the Pandora to - *if* I need to when there isn't wifi - browsing with Lightweight2 on the Pandora is so much easier than any android I've used...

The speed of emulation is excellent and I *still* have good reason to believe that the full capabilities of the Pandora are yet to be achieved.

Abiword works very well, I boot from SD, so I have custom plugins and extra dictionaries loaded, with an android even with a keyboard you are always limited by the size of the boot media... not that many apps seem to install to sd...?

Even when the Pandora is old hat I'll still have a need for a *separate* pocket device, unless the design and battery power of phones change *radically*

Now my impression - and its only that (for I have no facts to back it) - is that the Pandora project was just bumping along the bottom waiting for circuit co to churn out the boards... now along comes some one like Chame - starts a panic and there’s a run on refunds and goodbye Pandora project...

I don't see at *this* stage why its obvious the project has "critical financial problems" - don't get me wrong if the icontrol thing is a massive and there are more people ordering premium Pandora’s then I think Craigs BP is going to come right down.

It hasn't taken the whole two years to make barely 1k units - there had been plenty of stalls waiting for instance nub redesigns, while there where NO Pandora's being built AT ALL, so in effect saying the output is averaging at a little over 1 Pandora a day is both simplistic and misleading.