Is Pyra expensive outdated hardware?

[rohezal]

Diaprog has coded some virtual resolution hack for games like homm3

 

[ElPoco]

If you want to release a device with the latest hardware, you have three options:

1. Be a big company with a lot of weight (or that makes its own hardware) so that you can prototype and develop low-level software while the hardware is still in prototyping phases.

2. Buy an off-the-shelf smartphone from a Chinese company.

3. Get lucky and get a partnership with a big brand to test their latest hardware... But even then, you've got a huge risk of getting behind and releasing later than big companies. (See Pandora that was supposed to be the first device with an OMAP3)

There are many over-optimists people making companies or kickstarter projects for a phone with all the latest fancy hardware. They figure they just have to buy it from the manufacturers, put them together and insert them in a 3D printed case. And then they hit the real world, and the product gets delayed or even canceled as the price rises and the feature list shorten. And finally you have a device that's expensive, outdated and buggy.

 

[danielo515]

If you want to release a device with the latest hardware, you have three options:

1. Be a big company with a lot of weight (or that makes its own hardware) so that you can prototype and develop low-level software while the hardware is still in prototyping phases.

2. Buy an off-the-shelf smartphone from a Chinese company.

3. Get lucky and get a partnership with a big brand to test their latest hardware... But even then, you've got a huge risk of getting behind and releasing later than big companies. (See Pandora that was supposed to be the first device with an OMAP3)

There are many over-optimists people making companies or kickstarter projects for a phone with all the latest fancy hardware. They figure they just have to buy it from the manufacturers, put them together and insert them in a 3D printed case. And then they hit the real world, and the product gets delayed or even canceled as the price rises and the feature list shorten. And finally you have a device that's expensive, outdated and buggy.

Definitively a good explanation.

I don't want the latest hardware, just a powerful hardware. As an example we can see the odroid boards, which usually mounts powerful SOCs. Anyway, they are just boards and Pyra is a full pledged device.

I think all my question have been answered and we got a quite interesting debate.

Thank you very much.

 

[pmprog]

I don't want the latest hardware, just a powerful hardware

What do you consider "powerful hardware" if not the "latest"? My Amiga 600 was powerful hardware - compared to my Commodore 64.

 

[apink]

fwiw, a day late and a dollar short

My ideal hand-held computer would simply be a zaurus form factor, or even smaller, with an up-to-date soc inside and a good screen.  Smaller than the pandora, no gaming controls, no camera, no wifi, no telephony, no gps, but a hinge/lcd cable that lasts:  that would be perfect.  I need an open source computer with a hardware keyboard that I can put in my pocket.

My ideal hand-held machine is nowhere to be found, so I have a pandora and am very pleased with it.  When my pandora is on its last legs I suspect I will get a Pyra and be very happy with it.  That is, unless someone produces my ideal hand-held.  I guess there aren't a whole lot of people who have my same use case.

This is a round-about way of saying thank you ED for making such a kick-ass machine available to people.  You are never going to completely satisfy everybody but you have gotten very close for a lot of us.  I appreciate that you have satisfied my needs and I believe that I am not alone in my appreciation.

 

[ekianjo]

My Amiga 600 was powerful hardware - compared to my Commodore 64.

It was powerful even compared to the machines released in its own generation. It crushed all the PCs and Macs of the time (up until late 80s - early 90s), and it was certainly superior to the Atari ST and 1040 for graphics and sound. There was nothing like it.  

 

[danielo515]

This is a round-about way of saying thank you ED for making such a kick-ass machine available to people.  You are never going to completely satisfy everybody but you have gotten very close for a lot of us.  I appreciate that you have satisfied my needs and I believe that I am not alone in my appreciation.

 


You are right, I think that I also have to say thank you ED for the Pandora and thank you for the upcoming Pyra. Despite my "complaints" I'm very happy that you did not allowed the Pandora to die and I am even more happy with the fact that you are going to release a new kick ass machine.

 

[Binky]

"Latest" is always a pointless wild goose to be chasing after.

You can queue up outside the iShop, credit-card in hand, get the shiniest, roundest-cornered device ever, and it'll only last a few months before some other manufacturer comes up with another device with a slightly higher number on the specsheet.

The two questions are:

• Does it do the things I want it to do?
• Is the requirements_satisfied:cost ratio the best available?

I'm satisfied that the Pyra will fulfill more of my requirements than any other device currently on the market, and that its competitors are not sufficiently cheaper to justify the lack of functionality.

If I take off my "consumer" hat and don my "part of the community" hat, I'm also satisfied that, within the limitations of cost, availability and time, ED et. al. could not produce a device which better satisfies the collective requirements of the community.

Devices very rarely become objectively worse because you have the opportunity to buy a better one.

 

[Klumpen]

 

[khalismur]

Interesting discussion. Well, after ekianjo's first aggressive posts, it has lots of interesting information !

It's funny how people defend the Pyra / Pandora as crusaders on a mission. We all like the device, we all have it. But the OP's points are good ones. Points which WILL be asked by people who consider buying a Pyra !

 

[moxie]

I would guess that one factor - besides being crusaders on a mission of course - is the repetitiveness of it. As Klumpen alludes to above, more or less this exact thread tends to pop up every 3 months or so, and in the end some of the more temporally advanced board dwellers tend to lose their temper a bit.

Which is a bit unfair to every new person asking the same question, but still. I do get the same urge, sometimes, when I'm grading exams. By the 35th identical error I tend to want to write "I've already told you that is wrong!!! Why do you keep making the same error!!!" It takes great effort to remember that it is actually different students behind every exam

 

[levi]

My Amiga 600 was powerful hardware - compared to my Commodore 64.

 It was powerful even compared to the machines released in its own generation. It crushed all the PCs and Macs of the time (up until late 80s - early 90s), and it was certainly superior to the Atari ST and 1040 for graphics and sound. There was nothing like it.

The Acorn Archimedes was released in 1987 processing 4 MIPS and putting out up to 256 colours (which the Amiga could beat using HAM to be fair, but only in relatively static scenes as I understand it).

Of course, the initial machines were much more expensive than the Amiga 500, and 1992's AGA update brought 256 colour graphics to the Amiga too.

Also, its games market was kind of still-born, not being a major success in America. Some of the 8-bit houses developing on the BBC micro made some now obscure early games, and a few Amiga games did get ported to the system. Plus the second-best version of the original Elite!

 

[rygD]

 

Also, its games market was kind of still-born, not being a major success in America.

As I understand it, there weren't too many computers that were present in large numbers on both sides of the Atlantic between the late 70s and early 90s.  I only personally know of one or two people that had British computers in the US back then (ZX80, I think), and everyone else was using something from an American company.  I think Commodore was one of the exceptions to this, having products that were fairly popular in Europe and North America.  Feel free to correct me and fill in any gaps in my knowledge.

 

[Neelix]

I would guess that one factor - besides being crusaders on a mission of course - is the repetitiveness of it. As Klumpen alludes to above, more or less this exact thread tends to pop up every 3 months or so, and in the end some of the more temporally advanced board dwellers tend to lose their temper a bit.

Which is a bit unfair to every new person asking the same question, but still. I do get the same urge, sometimes, when I'm grading exams. By the 35th identical error I tend to want to write "I've already told you that is wrong!!! Why do you keep making the same error!!!" It takes great effort to remember that it is actually different students behind every exam

If you extend that example into an analogy though,  here the students take the exam one by one, and each student has the opportunity to review all the already marked exams before taking the same exam themselves, yet they still make all the same mistakes...

-Neelix

 

[Haraldur]

This thread is what FAQs are for, and then a thread like this can have one reply: a link to the FAQ. RTFM works when it is obvious where M is.

 

[WizardStan]

I do get the same urge, sometimes, when I'm grading exams. By the 35th identical error I tend to want to write "I've already told you that is wrong!!! Why do you keep making the same error!!!"

If so many of them are making the same mistakes have you considered that the problem might be you? (I tease, I tease)

 

[moxie]

Several times. Several

 

[levi]

As I understand it, there weren't too many computers that were present in large numbers on both sides of the Atlantic between the late 70s and early 90s.  I only personally know of one or two people that had British computers in the US back then (ZX80, I think), and everyone else was using something from an American company.  I think Commodore was one of the exceptions to this, having products that were fairly popular in Europe and North America.  Feel free to correct me and fill in any gaps in my knowledge.

Yeah, the Commodore machines and to a certain extent, Atari machines were successful in Europe (well, Britain at least). We also had the Spectrum, Amstrad machines, and BBC micros (plus various also-rans, from Dragon on down). Makes me wonder sometimes what else the Americans had for 8-bit machines; little old blightey had five major makes, America must've had more than those two and the TRS-80/Co-co (though I guess America was also into consoles in a bigger way than we seemed to be back then).

 

[Bosbeetle]

I would guess that one factor - besides being crusaders on a mission of course - is the repetitiveness of it. As Klumpen alludes to above, more or less this exact thread tends to pop up every 3 months or so, and in the end some of the more temporally advanced board dwellers tend to lose their temper a bit.

Which is a bit unfair to every new person asking the same question, but still. I do get the same urge, sometimes, when I'm grading exams. By the 35th identical error I tend to want to write "I've already told you that is wrong!!! Why do you keep making the same error!!!" It takes great effort to remember that it is actually different students behind every exam

Did you ever had to review code for an exam It was an oral exam and some of the students had the exact same code, they looked suprised how I could find an error in one glance of code (Strange world Im not a programmer by any means but I do teach it )

 

[moxie]

Oh, the amounts of bad code I've had to read and grade! And the surprise on students faces when I ask them "Well, if you have written this code, how come the hardcoded path names in it point to another students home directory" or "Well, it might be that you wrote this, but since you only got the assignment last week, how come all the files have a last changed-date over two years ago", or...

If you're gonna cheat, at least put som decent effort into the cheating, mmkay? And thats even without me mentioning people answering written assignments with internet cut-and-paste run through google translate...