Introduction (new member "hmc")

[hmc]

Hi all,


before I begin posting here more intensively, let me introduce myself:


My name is Daniel. I live in Bavaria, Germany, and am 34 years old.


Some people here may know me already, because I was active as "daniel3000" on forum.gp2x.de in the Pandora boards last year.


After a longer absence from the Pandora world, I am finally back again, have put the Windows-7 UMPC, which I used in the meantime, into the drawer, reactivated the Pandora and am very, VERY happy about it.


And since here in the English boards the discussion traffic seems to be higher than in the German gp2x.de boards, I decided to participate here rather than there.


Back then when I participated in gp2x.de boards, I ported some games and productivity / graphic applications to the Pandora.


Now I plan to continue working on such ports, so expect some new PNDs from me in the future


I drive a small business, dealing with hardware and software (producing and consulting) to optimize productivity on tiny computers. This is not meant as an ad (why should I advertise here in the crowd of Pandora fans? Wouldn't make sense anyway ;-), but only for your information: http://www.hermocom.com


With my business, and also in private, I hope to be able to help in spreading the word about the Pandora (and also the Pandora itself, once it becomes available in larger amounts, thus enlarging the Pandora community into a new direction), and in improving the Pandora's software and - maybe - hardware.


My main focus is productivity, not gaming.


After experiences with various different devices, beginning with the HP 200LX (MS-DOS 5.0, from 1997 to 2005 in daily and heavy use), then the Sharp Zaurus SL-C3x00 (I took the pdaXrom Linux distribution and heavily optimized it for the Zaurus, improving usability and stability, as well as the set of available applications, resulting in my own Linux distribution "weeXpc"), then some Windows XP/7-based UMPCs, mainly the UMID mBook M1 and then the Viliv N5, which I really liked for some time, but Windows is simply more and more frustrating the longer you use it.


Now I re-activated the Pandora and finally I am open to recognize and accept its great potential, even in the productivity field.


Please note that my participation here in the Pandora community is explicitly intended to be community-oriented, not profit-oriented.


Of course I am glad if people pay me for some consulting, configuration or custom spftware development / porting, but hermocom is not my main business, but a spare time business, not driven by the dependency of the profit it makes, but driven mainly by passion and interest.


Of course I am not only a pure productivity guy... The Pandora makes me play a short game or two a day, too. ;-) I played entirely through "Giana's Return" two times (my absolute favorite, also had it installed on the Viliv N5 UMPC, by the way, but on the Pandora it's playable much better), now beginning the third round, and I really like some of the retro games, just having started playing "Forget Me Not", and very much liking "Rocks and Diamonds", "LBreakout2" etc. But my gaming activity is limited to about 10 minutes a day in average. I enjoy good software development and optimization etc. more than gaming.


Also I must say, that I am a big fan of Mac OS X (note: of the OS, the pure software, I am not speaking aobut Apple's policies, restricting the user on Apple systems etc.). What I like about this OS is how well finished and user-friendly it is.


Whenever I optimize software, I have Mac-like usability in mind. Not that I am able to copy that level of usability, but even coming close to it is frequently appreciated by users of my software.


The PND software distribution system invented for the Pandora also is very similar to the system used on Mac OS X, where you basically only copy an ".app" file into the "Programs" folder for installing, and remove the file for uninstalling.


At the end of my introduction, let me provide some links you may find interesting. Again, not meant as an ad at all! You will see that I publish a lot of - hopefully useful - information, and that pages, which ask for money for software licenses etc are the absolute minority on my website


My Pandora page (will regularly be updated with links to productivity-related infmormation and products):


http://www.hermocom....ase/openpandora


The Pandora PND packages I provided so far (most of them are also published in the Repo, but not all, because the Repo didn't accept them. Need to revise those PNDs to make them repo-uploadable):


http://www.hermocom....ds/openpandora/


And some not Pandora-related content:


A huge pool of information about the HP 200LX Palmtop PC. The list of topics is visible on the left in the navigation pane. You will see some hardware (accessory) development for the 200LX I have done, as well as a lot of software tips, repair tips etc. Expect similar information, but probably not that much, for the Pandora in the future!


http://www.hermocom....wledgebase/hplx


This is how I evaluate, if a new device is suitable as a productivity device. Here I compared the new Viliv N5 with the ultimate reference, the HP 200LX:


http://www.hermocom....se/umpcs/hplxn5


If I find ways to optimize a system, I won't make a profitable deal from it, but provide the information for free, like this:


http://www.hermocom....umpcs/setupn5w7


(I know how sceptical folks can be, if someone driving a business enters a community dealing with open source software, hence I am that careful here. h34r: )


Enough said. I am happy to be here again, and looking forward to many good discussions, improvements, challenges, explorations and experiences with the Pandora!


Daniel

 

[milkshake]

welcome

 

[Mr Rob]

welcome

Don't you mean: "willkommen"?

 

[hmc]

welcome

Thanks milkshake, you are here too I remember us discussing PND upload / repo issues on IRC some time ago.


That reminds me that I should also reactivate my IRC software!


Daniel

 

[MarioPandio]

Welcome back Daniel, circuslinux I still find way too hard but I did use mtpaint (rather badly) to make my Christmas Avatar via the Pandora and conky is a useful app. I look forward to your improvements on anything productive the Pandora can be used for, or at least to tear me away from some games and nostalgia from time to time

 

[Caine]

Welcome to the English boards Daniel.

 

[moxie]

Woo! It is the mythical Hermocom man! I'm relatively starstruck. Really!


/owner of several HP-...lx-es

 

[lomaxx]

Servus, hmc.

 

[hmc]

Thanks, guys, for all the welcome posts!


It feels so much better here than on any of the dry and relatively anonymous Windows and UMPC forums!

Woo! It is the mythical Hermocom man! I'm relatively starstruck. Really!


/owner of several HP-...lx-es

Wow, am I mythical? :rolleyes: Actually I try to be as unmythical as possible.


You may have noticed that I don't hide the fact that hermocom is only me, and I don't hide myself behind hermocom.


So many companies present themselves on the Internet as much larger and much more mythical than they actually are...


Long live the HP 200LX! I have an entire collection here, some really rare units, with backlight, fancy speed upgrades, even an almost new one in its original box. Unfortunately spare parts are becoming rare now, especially the plastic case parts, which become porous and break more and more often. It's really sad.


I have searched for successors for so many years now. The real search began 1999 when HP discontinued the 200LX. None of the devices I used in the meantime was an adequate successor. Now, let's see if the Pandora is one!


It's so nice to meet old fellows here. (even if we don't know each other; the fact that you are a HP Palmtop user certainly makes us old fellows!


Also I assume that some old Zaurus folks are around here.


On the Zaurus forum there was even a project going on of some people developing an open-hardware Linux PDA.... don't remember the project name. But I remember that the ideas looked very similar to the Pandora, with the difference that it was not meant as a gaming device. But it was never built, as far as I know.


Is Nikolaus Schaller active here, too? He developed some interesting Mac-like software suite, which ran on the Zaurus. Then he was quite busy in the OpenMoko business. As far as I know he is involved now with the Pandora PCB design?

Welcome back Daniel, circuslinux I still find way too hard but I did use mtpaint (rather badly) to make my Christmas Avatar via the Pandora and conky is a useful app. I look forward to your improvements on anything productive the Pandora can be used for, or at least to tear me away from some games and nostalgia from time to time

circuslinux is only well playable with a mouse, IMHO. Have you tried with a mouse connected to the Pandora?


Your avatar is done with mtpaint on the Pandora? Great! I like it, and especially I like the fact that you used the Pandora to make it.


People like you are those who really admire and unleash the real potential of such small devices.


The next thing I'll do is install PanDebian with LibreOffice on the Pandora!


Daniel

 

[Binky]

Are you thinking about the Ben nanonote?


Could a HP200LX be emulated with a Pandora (and a bunch of of modifier keys!)


Not sure about mythical, but people upholding the clamshell form could be described as epic/legends!

 

[F_Slim]

Hi and welcome.


"Productivity software" sounds great, I also intend to use the Pandora as much for work related stuff as for gaming. It's great to see people work on that kind of stuff, too. Although such .PNDs will probably never receive as much praise as games I guess ;-)

 

[Darkknight512]

Nikolaus Schaller, I knew his name sounded familiar, I think ED knows him well and that he recently helped OPT with a small crisis. OPT got a few things from them that they were missing for the prototype run.

 

[hmc]

Hi guys,


(this MultiQuote feature of this forum is great!)

Are you thinking about the Ben nanonote?


Could a HP200LX be emulated with a Pandora (and a bunch of of modifier keys!)


Not sure about mythical, but people upholding the clamshell form could be described as epic/legends!

Nanonote: I have one here (of course ), but I don't like it too much.


I asked the author of NoteCase Pro if he could compile NoteCase Pro for the Nanonote (NoteCase Pro is my main tool for all kinds of stuff on all my computers, be it Windows, Linux, Mac or the mobile ones). He tried, but didn't succeed yet. Without NoteCase Pro, the Nanonote is not too useful for me personally.


Also, the screen resolution is much too low for anything useful. Lack of an X server limits the range of software significantly. And the keyboard is not very usable either.


I can think if the Nanonote being a great tool for very special purposes, but I have not found such a purpose yet.

Hi and welcome.


"Productivity software" sounds great, I also intend to use the Pandora as much for work related stuff as for gaming. It's great to see people work on that kind of stuff, too. Although such .PNDs will probably never receive as much praise as games I guess ;-)

Probably you are right. But for me it's not important that the stuff I do gets much attention. What I do and did in that field, is and was always only serving a quite small niche market. For me it's far more important that those few people who admire what I do are really satisfied.


I don't like mainstream. I don't like low-quality standard cheap stuff. There is so much low-quality software out there nowadays, driven (IMHO) mainly by the "app stores" for iOS and Android.


Here is a quote from an email I recently wrote to a friend regarding "apps":

I am not at all a friend of this "app" philosophy (I think I said that before..)



In my opinion this leads to the expectation on users side, that all



software is

cheap

, no matter if it's low- or high-quality. So authors



have a hard time selling their high-quality software for a decent



price, OTOH they can make better (means: more profitable) money with



low-quality software.



Thus, authors are much more motivated to build low-quality stuff than



high-quality stuff and the world ls flooded with almost unusable or



not useful software, for which users even need to pay license fees.





Btw, that's also why I don't like the term "app" at all.




If I write software, it's either available for free or it costs a reasonable (meaning: not too cheap) license fee.


But even for the free software I develop, I claim high quality.




Daniel

 

[moxie]

Heh - No, not mythical like that More like, when I started to get into the HPlx-series, I was rather late to the party, so to speak, and your page was one of the few ones where it was actually possible to get good information. So I've frequented your website quite a lot, and read your technical HPlx details very carefully


Re emulating the lx: Softwarewise it is a 286 dos 5.0 machine with CGA graphics, more or less. There is some specific hooks in the OS, but more or less anything that could run on it, could probably run under DOSbox (or, for the poductivity stuff, be replaced with modern successors). The thing with the HPlx that would be competitive still today is the hardware - the combination of form factor and battery time, the full keyboard and screen, and the balance between storage space and built-in apps. For its time, it was more or less perfect. They went through a few iterations - The HP95lx was the first, DOS 3.30, 186, less screen resolution. Then the 100lx (5.0, 286, full screen) , then the 200lx, with more memory and tweaked software. Then came the OmniGo and everything went downhill. Personally, I blame the introduction of touch screens


And no, the Pandora can't touch the HP for battery life But in the other categories, it is making a rather nice showing

 

[hmc]

oops, sorry, I forgot to comment on your Pandora / HPLX emulation question.


In fact, I have set up HPLX "emulation" on a Pandora already, for a customer to try.


He didn't like it too much, but YMMV.


The setup was:


DOSBox, running HP Connectivity Pack inside (which is basically a quite complete emulation of the HPLX's ROM software), all installed on the Pandora.


There are a few problems:


- Squeezing the 640x200 screen of the HPLX into the screen size of the Pandora makes the display quite hard to read, compared to the real 200LX.


The problems of screen display in DOSBox on the Pandora are basically the same as in DOSBox on the UMID mBook M1, which are described here:


http://www.hermocom.com/en/knowledgebase/umpcs/cpackm1


Only that the Pandora screen is even smaller than the mBook screen...


The best option to run CPack on the mBook M1 was to use PocketDOS instead of DOSBox, but PocketDOS is not available for ARM architecture.


- The Pandora lacks some important keys the 200LX had, and configuring the key mapper of DOSBox is a pain. So I was never able to provide a key mapping scheme, which worked well enough.


But all in all you CAN emulate a HP 100LX or 200LX on the Pandora. Not fully, but for many purposes it basically works.


Daniel

 

[Link]

You brought over Conky, thanks for that, it looks really cool running on the background of people's screen shots I've seen.

 

[Prometheus]

Hi and welcome - it's nice to meet you!


Something from one of your posts just caught my eye, and I must comment on it...

Here is a quote from an email I recently wrote to a friend regarding "apps":

I am not at all a friend of this "app" philosophy (I think I said that before..)



In my opinion this leads to the expectation on users side, that all



software is

cheap

, no matter if it's low- or high-quality. So authors



have a hard time selling their high-quality software for a decent



price, OTOH they can make better (means: more profitable) money with



low-quality software.



Thus, authors are much more motivated to build low-quality stuff than



high-quality stuff and the world ls flooded with almost unusable or



not useful software, for which users even need to pay license fees.





Btw, that's also why I don't like the term "app" at all.

It's so nice to see someone else who feels this way! Folks not understanding what realistic prices are because of this sort of thing drives me absolutely crackers (I mean, I can see spots where the bubble's potentially going to burst, but so many folks seem to miss this).




Granted, I see it more often relating to games as that's one of my primary fields of interest, but I can easily see how it applies to all sorts of other software as well.




You'll probably see me use the term "app" from time to time, but I use it in the older sense - that is, I use it as the abbreviated form of "application" that simply means the same thing as "program", rather than the abbreviated form of "application" that's come to mean "unrealistically cheap software".





Anyway, welcome!

 

[hmc]

An anecdote:


Recently someone ordered a license for my Symbian-based diabetes management appLICATION "C-Diary".


The license costs 24 Euro.


In the order mail he said that he doesn't understand that ridiculously high price, given nowadays common app prices.


But he paid the price anyway.


I could hardly resist to ask why he paid the price anyway, although he thinks it's ridiculously high (the answer to this question would have given him the explanation for his own problem with the price, but I am not Socrates, so I didn't ask).


Instead I explained it:


- It's not one of many similar "apps", but a solution covering a very small niche: diabetics using a Symbian S60 or UIQ phone. a VERY small niche.


- it's not a low-quality "app", but a quite high-quality software product, as proven by the very positive feedback of almost all of the customers


- I showed him a calculation, given the sold licenses (not license sales are almost stuck, because Symbian is about to die, thanks to Nokia's contract with Microsoft), given the amount of work I put into this project and given a reasonable hourly rate for my work. The result was that I actually needed to ask about 400 Euro for one license.


Of course, if I did this, the number of sales would have been much lower, so this was not a real solution. But I think 24 Euro is a fair compromise for this kind of software.


The customer now understood.


Daniel

 

[Hoodoo]

It's nice to see someone interested it this aspect of Pandora.

 

[WizardStan]

The customer now understood.

No they didn't. Customer's never understand, they'll just pat you on the head and agree with whatever you say to get you to shut up and get back to writing their software for them. After all, they're doing you a favour! They could have gotten their nephew to do it for half the price, but he's busy going through school and don't want to bother him.