Is Pandora stronger than a OQO?

[craigix]

Yeah, when we say handheld we mean DS kind of size and portable tech with good battery life, not ancient x86 stuff crammed in to a small case giving you 1 hour of battery life (which I think is pretty pointless).

Pandora is all about fast, cutting edge, low power technology. Much nicer.

 

[Blue Ion]

For those interested
http://www.umpcportal.com/2008/09/everu ... ull-review

Running UT2003 is mighty impressive for a thing of that size.
2 hours of battery, however, is not.
Not that other UMPCs batteries last much more but having to carry either an extra battery (there's one for 4 hours max) or the power brick really reduces the main appeal of UMPC: portability.
Specially if you game reducing battery life even further.

Also lets not forget price is as high as the specs of the device.

Honestly I really love it's size and power and having a proper accelerator chip really hits the spot, but the two drawbacks (battery and price) are the reasons why I still don't have any type of laptop (netbook, umpc, pda, whatever).
Those are not for gaming, my main interest, whereas the pandora is and since I don't intend to type anything (lengthy, that is) I think the pandora works just fine (I surveyed the DS for a while, but it was too little powerful).
Typing is already a pain with laptops with 12" screens and for that I still prefer a fully sized, fully fledged mechanic keyboards with a 19" inch monitor to match.
Sure, It's not even portable, but I do those only at my home or university.

As a final note, this is quite larger than a ds lite, still smaller than notebooks, but not pocket sized.

 

[PoisonedV]

You know whats more impressive than running ut2k3?
running doom 3... hopefully that will materialize

 

[soulanger]

UT2K3 for the pandora. *drools*
Its one of the few fps that got me hooked.
/me is not much of an fps fan h34r:

 

[joa]

Where are the gaming controls...oh wait!

 

[the_darkside_986]

Wait... a VIA cpu and graphics (trying to) run Vista? ha. CPU cycle spec becomes less important when the CPU is a crap architecture from a crap brand running a bloated OS. Some benchmarking tests comparing that OQO thing with Pandora running Angstrom would be interesting to see. But the OQO's battery would probably die before the test completes, with Vista and such.

 

[fischju]

Wait... a VIA cpu and graphics (trying to) run Vista? ha. CPU cycle spec becomes less important when the CPU is a crap architecture from a crap brand running a bloated OS. Some benchmarking tests comparing that OQO thing with Pandora running Angstrom would be interesting to see. But the OQO's battery would probably die before the test completes, with Vista and such.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POV-Ray
POV-Ray is distributed in compiled format for Macintosh, Windows and Linux. Support for Intel Macs is not available in the Macintosh version, but since Mac OS is a version of Unix the Linux version can be compiled on it. POV-Ray also could be ported to any platform which has compatible C++ compiler.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whetstone_(benchmark)
Source code and pre-compiled versions for PCs in C/C++, Basic, Visual Basic Fortran and Java are available in Roy Longbottom's PC Benchmark Collection (Free). Compiled codes include those to run via DOS, OS/2 plus 32 bit and 64 bit Windows.
The Whetstone benchmark primarily measures the floating-point arithmetic performance. A similar benchmark for integer and string operations is the Dhrystone.


I'd love to see some benchmarks.

 

[mali]

Wait... a VIA cpu and graphics (trying to) run Vista? ha. CPU cycle spec becomes less important when the CPU is a crap architecture from a crap brand running a bloated OS. Some benchmarking tests comparing that OQO thing with Pandora running Angstrom would be interesting to see. But the OQO's battery would probably die before the test completes, with Vista and such.

Well, actually the cpu wasn't that bad regarding performance to power consumption ratio(for a x86 that is). :wink: But it is also outdated by now.

 

[j.pickens]

I have the OQO version 1 running XP.
It gets hot as hell, and runs less than 40 minutes on battery.
I use it for presentations and training hooked up to a VGA projector.
Great for this application, pretty useless for other day to day use.
I tried using it for sofatop internet browsing, but the heat and battery life made me return to my Nokia 770 internet tablet.
The Pandora should blow the doors off of either of these.
Now, If I can only get some form of USB digital video out for the presentations...

 

[eksasol]

When your looking for the most powerful UMPC's, your looking at the Samsungs Q1 Ultra with a Core Solo U1500 1.3ghz or the Sony UX Series with a Core 2 Solo U2200 1.2ghz.

Don't forget about the Raon Everun Note, it is the only dual core umpc out right now. Plus it has ati graphics.

I am still more interested in a larger sized than handheld umpc that can act as a full blown computer, the pandora is second priority for me, but I didn't want to wait to have it until march 2009.

Kind off topic here since I'm not so much interested in the OQO2 anymore being it costing about 3times more than the Note, with specs that seemed to be slower. Even though the OQO is very powerful, because of it's size its comfort of usage is going to be compared to a handheld, like the pandora, so to me it seemed more like an overpriced handheld thing. I've tried it out in reallife, and for it's design it's just way too small to sit back and comfortable do full blown desktop things like typing up a document. You can see a lot of videos on the OQO2 on youtube, such as playing halflife at fullspeed. I have seen doctors uses these, I think it's a device that appeal to a more specific audiences and their tasks, and that's the problem, I think these UMPC is still searching at a balance in design that is practical and affordable for mass market, the eeePCs are coming close to it.

I've been looking at the Raon Digital company for a long time. I didn't know they had some recall, I have to read up about that. I would have gotten the Note if I didn't exhausted my budget with the Pandora preorder and also I am still unsure about the 2hours battery life. 1.8" HDD maybe slow, well they are the ones used in your ipod, but with optimized installation of XP and dualcore I am willing to take my chances, don't see why it can't run decently. DX9 card is a must for me, I think that's the final signal to give me to go ahead to buy one of these thing. I don't need anything amazing, but if it can manage day of defeat source and richard burnds rally on low graphic, the only two 3d game I played for the last 3 years it's good enough for me.

The price for these UMPC doesn't really go down lately, but I am hoping by 2009 they will with handheld becoming ever more popular.

Oh and for the record, why on earth do they put vista on these devices, it's insane.

 

[km2783]

A few of the ones stuffed with Vista come with XP on a disc but cost $100 more. Heh.

I looked hard at a Fujitsu Lifebook UMPC, it's pretty small and I'm barely able to touch-type on it, but to get the 5-6ish hours of battery life out of it, it comes with an extended battery that makes it about an inch wider for $1000, I said screw it, though I did surf the internet over wifi pretty well under the Vista OS. It was in the store and I didn't have a chance at multitasking on the A600 CPU, but the graphics chipset was the good ol Intel 950

I think in the bang for the buck arena, the Pandora destroys most everything else out there.

 

[darkblu]

Oh and for the record, why on earth do they put vista on these devices, it's insane.

for the same reason they make those devices last ridiculously short on battery - they're not meant to do work.

 

[CCmachined]

yes, because everybody wants a easily breakable HDD, Intel CPU and 5" screen running full-blown Windows with a total lack of any gaming controls on a battery for 3 hours and then becoming a useless brick to carry around. this is for... people who need vast amounts of power on the move to be wasted by Vista for little time actually away from a power-source who aren't gaming...

okay, so people who really really really need Vista-only software on the move. Not Pandora people or our market. Pandora will be able to do most if not all of the tasks this can, obviously minus PC-software (x86) compatibility. OQO has power, but is more of a tech showoff than a usable product. i'd find a Pandora way more useful. i also really like the standardised battery nature - not proprietary and so i won't have to spend £70+ on a battery that lasts only another 3 hours... £15 for 10 hours! Sold!

In short, i wouldn't recommend it over a Pandora for handheld gaming.

edit: also, its for people that don't see or like the usefulness of a touchscreen on a mobile device, apparently.

 

[rmm2131]

I heard also that Pandora can bench press 450lbs, squat 610lbs, and jog 10 miles.

XP and Vista can only do 30 jumping jacks with 5lb pink dumbells while watching "Sweating to the Oldies" thus the answer is clear which is better, stronger, faster.

 

[phrosty]

I heard also that Pandora can bench press 450lbs, squat 610lbs, and jog 10 miles.

XP and Vista can only do 30 jumping jacks with 5lb pink dumbells while watching "Sweating to the Oldies" thus the answer is clear which is better, stronger, faster.

Vista has it's own song to work out to.

 

[emil10001]

Just wanted to throw in my two cents. I had an OQO 02, and it was awful. I needed to run Linux on it, and Via provides little to no support for their chipsets under Linux. This was crippling for performance. Even under windows XP, the OQO was slow and didn't work terribly well. The big problem was an unoptomized hardware/software combination that didn't really justify the large cost of the OQO. Since my n800 turned out to be much faster to use than the OQO, I got rid of my OQO and picked up a MacBook Air, used in conjunction with my n800. I'm looking forward to an even faster embedded in the Pandora, since it should easily out-perform the n800. So, if you want a fast, hand-held Linux based embedded device, the pandora will probably be your best option, hands-down.

 

[Kyosys]

I heard also that Pandora can bench press 450lbs, squat 610lbs, and jog 10 miles.

XP and Vista can only do 30 jumping jacks with 5lb pink dumbells while watching "Sweating to the Oldies" thus the answer is clear which is better, stronger, faster.

Vista has it's own song to work out to.

Wow, that's... awesome

I still don't want to install windows vista, though

 

[mali]

Just wanted to throw in my two cents. I had an OQO 02, and it was awful. I needed to run Linux on it, and Via provides little to no support for their chipsets under Linux. This was crippling for performance. Even under windows XP, the OQO was slow and didn't work terribly well. The big problem was an unoptomized hardware/software combination that didn't really justify the large cost of the OQO. Since my n800 turned out to be much faster to use than the OQO, I got rid of my OQO and picked up a MacBook Air, used in conjunction with my n800. I'm looking forward to an even faster embedded in the Pandora, since it should easily out-perform the n800. So, if you want a fast, hand-held Linux based embedded device, the pandora will probably be your best option, hands-down.

Exactly! A supercharged n800 with all drivers and decent gaming controls If it cuts the time I usually spend with my notebook in half, it was a good buy.

 

[psj3809]

Dont think you can compare a Pandora to an oQo. The Pandora is much cheaper, seems more focused on gaming and the oQo is quite a high end gadget.

I bought an oQo2 off ebay earlier this year (got lucky as the guy thought the screen was broken so there werent many bids, in the end it was the screen cover which had bubbles !) and i love the oQo. (Wouldnt go near the oqo 1 though which people are still trying to sell on ebay for silly prices)

Half Life runs fine on it, Red Alert II plays very well and many other games which i've installed on it. For games where i need a joystick i use the one USB on it. Its obviously not meant for gaming but its a great device, looks great and i'm a huge fan of it as you can tell. The oQo i have is the 1.5 mhz version with XP and it runs very well and a ton of games /apps superbly. Big fan of it. (And i use it for work a fair bit as i use it for demonstrations and plug into a monitor). There are of course drawbacks to the little gadget but so far its been fine for me and i think its superb.

The Pandora looks exciting as anything because of the gaming capabilities for myself.

 

[chiark]

Yes, they are comparable if you go for the older version. You can get an OQO 01+ model for under 300 quid now from expansys, or for around 200 on ebay...

I bought one.

I sold it two weeks later. Wifi is atrocious on the 01+, battery life a joke, the fan is annoyingly loud and almost always on, the transmeta processor is slower than a slow thing on a go slow, and generally the form factor simply doesn't work for Windows.

The OQO 02 or e2 have a better processor (the via C7 stuff is actually pretty damn good) but it still wouldn't work for me.

I am sorely tempted by the Raon Digital Everun Note to replace my libretto U100 as the most mobile laptop that I have...