Keeping My Order

[Deso]

Hellollo future pandora owners!


I also ordered from the first batch, like nearly all of you here. I was so excited about the pandora that i just decided to buy it 2 mins after i first saw it.
As everyone here, i was hoping on receiving the device at the end of 2008.
Nowadays we're just stretching and stretching the deadline and i'm starting to lose my interest in this baby.

As you might have guessed by now I'm considering to cancel my order and just buy a netbook. Please dont flame ;-)
One of the main uses of my pandora would be downloading torrents on my home wifi, while I'm away to work.
I can't justify leaving my behemoth desktop pc on while i'm away, just to download some stuff(uses about 250W idle).
So the pandora (or a netbook) would pay for itself in a year or so (negliable electricity costs).
The pandora is also a really easy portable device and its worth the extra cost from lets say a beagleboard.
The fact that the Pandora can play all sorts of games is cool but it's not my main concern.

Could anyone show me some games the pandora will be able to play that for instance netbook cannot?
I'm crazy about games like "day of the tentacle",the "zelda" series,"baldurs gate"(possible on pandora?)
RPG's and adventures...but these are all able to run on a netbook.
I'm not all that familiar with PSX, atari, etc games so there might be a lot of undiscovered jewels in there.
Hopefully this will keep me convinced to not ask for my refund.
Thanks in advance!


Just on a sidenote: I really dont understand why the CNCed parts took so long to make.
Here in Belgium my company works with a school that has a 3D printer and other rapid prototyping methods and they get stuff like this done in 1 day, tops.
Second, why is it called CNC when it's not? CNC takes a solid piece of material and "removes" material from it.
Looking at the pics on the blog, it clearly shows a printed part.

 

[lulzfish]

The Pandora can't emulate any more games than a netbook.
It's just.. not as powerful. In fact, the Pandora will have less games available than a netbook, although some people will be making Pandora-exclusive games.

You might be thinking of the FDM case, which was printed.
The CNC case was CNC milled, so it's more precise and took longer to make.

 

[klikklak]

Buy both, netbook for server duties and a pandora for joy while in transit (I'm presuming you don't use a bicycle or a car). Game controls are really the thing that sets pandora (and the wiz) apart that and easy to setup emulators with standardized hardware. A decent frontend (like wahcade) takes care of the hassle on a pc, but compared to a gp2x it's a hassle to get to work.

Your usage scenario (just downloading stuff while your gone) does sort of mean that you might be better off with a netbook, just forget about gaming comfortably.

Personally, I'm balancing between pandora and the wiz or maybe both. And definitely a second batcher if I end up with a pandora. Which looks quite likely now.

 

[Deso]

The Pandora can't emulate any more games than a netbook.
It's just.. not as powerful. In fact, the Pandora will have less games available than a netbook, although some people will be making Pandora-exclusive games.

You might be thinking of the FDM case, which was printed.
The CNC case was CNC milled, so it's more precise and took longer to make.

Aha, thanks for the quick reply and clearing the CNCed case up!
*eyeballs the Dell mini 9...*

Maybe somebody else can convince me?

 

[lulzfish]

The Pandora can't emulate any more games than a netbook.
It's just.. not as powerful. In fact, the Pandora will have less games available than a netbook, although some people will be making Pandora-exclusive games.

You might be thinking of the FDM case, which was printed.
The CNC case was CNC milled, so it's more precise and took longer to make.

Aha, thanks for the quick reply and clearing the CNCed case up!
*eyeballs the Dell mini 9...*

Maybe somebody else can convince me?


Hey, I never said that was a valid reason not to get one.
Consider this:

Netbooks cannot fit in your pocket
The Pandora can

Netbooks have a 3 or 4 hour battery life
The Pandora is closer to 7 or 8 hours, possibly more if it's just idling.

The Pandora solves the mobility problems netbooks only thought they could solve.

 

[Tor]

If it's just idling you can expect, I don't know, three weeks maybe. At least. The Pandora has a 4000mAh battery, the N800 battery is 1500mAh and it can idle for 9-10 days when the battery is new (a 2-year old like mine can still go for 8 days).

 

[WizardStan]

I intend to buy a beagle board as my always-on system, just as soon as the next board revision hits. Built on the same technology as the Pandora, it should be fairly trivial to jump from one to the other and interface them together. It'd be like owning a Pandora and spending an extra $150 for a docking station, except your docking station is a full CPU in itself. That's two CPUs (one stay-at-home and one on the go) for about the price of a netbook.

 

[Racemaniac]

we've gone over this a million times already i think, but lets say it again?

netbook vs pandora:
-pandora fits in your pocket
-has a touchscreen
-has gaming controls

if you don't care for either of those, get the netbook

 

[Kaze0110]

we've gone over this a million times already i think, but lets say it again?

netbook vs pandora:
-pandora fits in your pocket
-has a touchscreen
-has gaming controls

if you don't care for either of those, get the netbook

That's pretty much what I was going to say.

The difference between the netbook, and the pandora, neverminding the power, is the size.
It can do the same things that the netbook can, but it can do it longer, and when you're done, it'll fit in your pocket, and you can walk off with it.

 

[Eniko]

It amazes me that quite a few people have apparently put their money into a Pandora when they would have been just as happy with the feature set of a more readily available and tested device like a netbook or Iphone.

 

[x68000]

What amazes me is that people like the OP come on here and ask us to justify their purchase to them! You know the ones, 'convince me to keep my order for xyz!'.

Why should we have to? If you can't understand the implications of ordering to begin with, then why bother at all??

I think you should convince us why we shouldn't all flame you for being so naive in the first place.

 

[valhalla]

Why would you buy a portable device to leave at home always on and always connected?

For p2p downloads it would make way more sense to buy one of those small appliances that use even less power (no display, no graphic chips, no wifi, no nothing that consumes useless power), take probably even less space (than a netbook, a pandora could be close) and are generally perfect for the job.

The latest cool one would be the sheeva plug http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9634061300.html
an older one was the nslu2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2
but there are countless such devices that sell at 100$ or below, some of them even x86 based.

As for software, as long as you can put openembedded or debian on them, there will be no shortage, just like there isn't for the pandora.

 

[MDave]

Get a UMID M1, if your that unsure. Sounds more like something you want instead of a Pandora (run win xp, games and apps). RPG games and such don't really require gaming controls as much as others too, so it should be fine. Fits in your shirt pocket, too.

 

[fischju2000]

Many NAS systems now have built in torrent clients as well http://www.mvixbenelux.com/?subid=2&id=1&subsubid=31

 

[chole]

we've gone over this a million times already i think, but lets say it again?

netbook vs pandora:
-pandora fits in your pocket
-has a touchscreen
-has gaming controls

if you don't care for either of those, get the netbook

There're a couple more to add to the standardized list: The aforementioned
-lasts ("many"?) hours longer
as well as
-runs more quietly
-Can't accidentally install Windows Vista on it

(just joking around on that last one)

The latest cool one would be the sheeva plug

I've been looking around for a Forum or newsgroup that discusses this and plug computing in general. It's an almost perfect replacement for my old mail/app/im server. The old i-opener/Audrey/etc forums like those at linux-hacker.net seem generally dead. I guess I could randomly start topics at linuxdevices.com, but I was hoping to find a forum section somewhere dedicated to this type of box. Any suggestions? I probably have a few days left to decide if I want to preorder the PogoPlug at its discounted price, but I'd like to just see how the communities are forming for these devices.