Mini-review: My first impressions (after 4 days)


_wb_

Microbe
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I had big expectations while waiting for my Pandora to arrive, because I have been reading a lot about all the nice things it can do, but I was also worried about various issues that are discussed on the forums. I'm happy to say that my expectations are met. Here are my first impressions:


- The Pandora is small, very small. When you look at YouTube movies of people playing games or doing other stuff on the Pandora, it seems like the screen is bigger (probably just because I'm watching the movies on a big screen or even on a projector). Of course it is nice that it is small, because I can carry it in my pocket and hold it in my hands very comfortably (unlike, say, my Vaio P series mini-laptop, which is small and has a very, very nice keyboard, but you have to put it on a table).


- The build quality is very nice in my opinion. It feels solid and sturdy; maybe the hinge will get looser over time but I'm mostly using the Pandora with the lid completely open or completely closed anyway. My left trigger button is a bit loose, but it's not like it's going to fall off or anything, and it works just fine. The screen is very slightly non-horizontal: at the top of the screen, the distance to the frame is a fraction of a milimeter bigger on the right than on the left. This is not noticable unless you have bright colors at the screen edges and look at it very carefully. Again, not a big deal at all. Other than these two very minor things, the build quality is very professional. I actually like the plastic, it feels warmer than metal cases, allows a better grip (metal can become a bit slippery when sweating), and no visible fingerprints is nice - if you have an iPad or similar device, you'll appreciate that.


- The screen quality is great. Obviously in direct sunlight on a sunny day it is not going to be very usable, but in normal lighting conditions, the screen looks great, even with low backlight settings. After calibration, the touch screen works very well and precise; I can actually draw stuff on it. In comparison, drawing on an iPad is like fingerpainting with very thick fingers. For web browsing, being able to click on a link without having to zoom in first to make sure that you're not clicking the wrong thing is obviously nice.


- The sound quality is great. The analog volume knob is great - I hate those digital volume buttons that jump right from silence to too loud and depend on software to actually do anything (meaning slight delays between button presses and actual volume change, and not working at all if for some reason the OS does not catch the button event). It is nice to have a standard headphone jack (this should be a no-brainer, but Apple thinks otherwise, which means I still cannot use any of my headphones with my iPad).


- I'm no expert (never owned any game controllers except joysticks for the C64), but the dpad, action buttons and nubs feel very good.


- The keyboard is great. Thumb-typing works well after just a little practice; left trigger being SHIFT helps a lot. If you're used to using lots of shortcuts like CTRL-SHIFT-T to open a new terminal tab or CTRL-PAGEUP/DOWN to switch between terminal tabs: some of these are easier to do on the Pandora than on a real keyboard! Some combinations are tricky though, especially those involving ALT and the function-keys, e.g. ALT-F4 is not very convenient, and neither is ALT-TAB. But most shortcuts can be configured anyway. No keyboard backlight means it is hard to code in the dark, and the shiny buttons are a bit annoying in direct sunlight. Other than that, great keyboard given the space constraints.


- The general quality of the software is very high: of course everything can always be more polished, but if you're used to GNU/Linux like me, things are very user-friendly. The PND Manager is great, it should be included in the next firmware release - or alternatively, some set of "recommended PND's" or "starter's kit SD card image" should be put somewhere visible to new Pandora owners, and the PND Manager should be in it, along with things like the community codecs. The only thing I wish was added is an easy way to upgrade the firmware without losing your settings; at least it could back up /home/* to the SD card and put it back, but I would also like to be able to upgrade the system I'm booting from SD card without losing everything I've installed there.


- I've seen many complaints about wireless not working or being slow. Mine works very well; I easily get download speeds of 500MB/sec which is more than enough for me. The antenna range seems to be about the same as on my laptops, which is nice because I think my laptops throw more power at it. Only minor issue: the wifi enable/disable toggle should be integrated into the wifi connection applet, so this takes up less space (I'm using a vertical task bar so space counts!).


- So far, I've not had to overclock at all. At the default cpu speed, everything I tried works well enough. I've been compiling some large projects on the Pandora itself (e.g. SWI-Prolog; does anyone want me to package this in a PND by the way? It just compiles out of the box (after installing the dependencies, which are simple opkg installs), which is a quite cpu intensive task, and it is fast enough for me, comparable to doing it on a PC or big laptop. I suspect that it is fast because reading many relatively small files from an SD card could be faster than reading them from a rotating hard disk (which add seek times).


- Battery life is excellent! I'm getting something like 10 hours when downloading stuff while keeping the CPU busy (doing big compiles) and with the screen backlight on an intermediate value. Without wifi and with a less bright screen, it's more like 14 hours. With the lid closed, just playing music, I'm getting >20 hours. This is really a very strong point of the Pandora. I only wish there was something like powertop (which is a power monitoring/tweaking tool, specific for intel) for the Pandora, so I can figure out how to get even more out of it. Also, I hope there soon will be a music player that uses the DSP so it uses even less power. Also, spare batteries are quite cheap and small (compared to laptops), so if needed, I could put one or a few spare batteries in my pocket (maybe I have abnormally large pockets, but I could fit about 6-8 Pandoras in the pockets of my current pants (I would need a belt though because that would be quite some weight), so I could in theory carry 20 or so spare batteries with my Pandora). Anyway, just on one battery the battery life is quite nice, certainly enough to get me through the day without needing to think about the power plug.


In conclusion, even though I had high expectations, so far the Pandora has not disappointed me in any way! Big thanks to all the hardware and software developers who made this possible!
 
Nice review. You are among the very few people who have worded the great usabilty provided by the L/R and gaming buttons in everyday computing, something I really love about this little device.
 
Nice review. I have to agree on the alt-issue. I would love to see the successor (if any) have four shoulder buttons for ctrl, alt, shift and Fn respectively.


I recently ordered my second unit myself as my first one is now suffering from an increasing amount of flaws (serious case of PTOD, bad shoulder buttons, wobbly hinge and crack in the case). Despite these flaws I cannot bear to miss my Pandora for a few weeks, hence I decided to just order a new one instead (also because I want the larger RAM).


It's an amazing little gadget. You get used to the size though. It only feels extremely tiny in the beginning.
 
Nice review. :)


Alt-Tab isn't so bad once you lean to key Tab with one finger. Just press fn with the right side of your finger, and then roll it to the left to left to press space.


- Neelix
 
Pandora is indeed the ultimate linux hand-held.

More importantly, it is the ultimate GNU handheld. :p


Actually, if you define a "handheld" as something pocket-sized that doesn't need a surface to sit on or other components to be used with it, doesn't the Pandora have a monopoly for GNU handhelds? I can't think of any I've heard of.
 
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lol, yes it is, I meant 500KB/sec. I would be very happy to find a provider anywhere that can offer 500MB/sec download speed :)

Ha, okay. Regardless of what an ISP could give you, I couldn't imagine anything handling such a transfer well (even dd-ing from /dev/zero to /dev/null tops out at 240MB/second on my laptop).
 
Nice review. :)


Alt-Tab isn't so bad once you lean to key Tab with one finger. Just press fn with the right side of your finger, and then roll it to the left to left to press space.


- Neelix

It is certainly very doable, but it's just that ALT is in a tricky location compared to the triggers. Also, I almost never use the actual SHIFT and CTRL buttons (except when games need SELECT), so perhaps I should remap them...
 
You'd be fine remapping left Shift, but remapping left Ctrl would be a bad idea; most games that use the game buttons just assume the default keyboard mapping (since that's easier than looking directly at the hardware level).
 
or alternatively, some set of "recommended PND's" or "starter's kit SD card image" should be put somewhere visible to new Pandora owners, and the PND Manager should be in it, along with things like the community codecs.

There is the Panda Pack concept, which has one release so far:


http://www.pandorawiki.org/PandaPacks


I would also consider Yoshi's emulation pack to be something like that:


http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,5,404


--


I'm still trying to get my bearings, but I intend to do reviews of PNDs, software, talk about settings, possible project bounties, etc.


One of the things I want to do is create a showcase bundle with applications and media which demonstrate the use of each component. I'm currently working on re-learning my old emulator skills so I can get my old tracked tunes and DOS demo collection all playing under emulation.
 
Pandora is indeed the ultimate linux hand-held.

More importantly, it is the ultimate GNU handheld. :p


Actually, if you define a "handheld" as something pocket-sized that doesn't need a surface to sit on or other components to be used with it, doesn't the Pandora have a monopoly for GNU handhelds? I can't think of any I've heard of.

I'd be pleased to remove GNU software from Linux, it's almost all unusable garbage. Good for programming, great for philosophy.. terrible for users.


There is a long history of Linux handhelds, including Linux with a full keyboard like the Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000 / SL-C3100


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Zaurus


The Pandora is NOT special _just_ as a Linux device. It is special for its particular combination of features, especially gaming controls (and battery life..).
 
I'd be pleased to remove GNU software from Linux, it's almost all unusable garbage.

Erm... GNU is unusable garbage?


You do know that GNU isn't a part of Linux, the kernel, right? You also know that a kernel without an OS can't do much of anything, right?


Given that, what OS is there that's better than GNU for the purpose it fulfills?
 
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I'd be pleased to remove GNU software from Linux, it's almost all unusable garbage.

Erm... GNU is unusable garbage?


You do know that GNU isn't a part of Linux, the kernel, right? You also know that a kernel without an OS can't do much of anything, right?


Given that, what OS is there that's better than GNU for the purpose it fulfills?

Linux, the distribution, is the de facto name used. The name grab is pointless. GNU software for an OS _is_ complete crap and I welcome every replacement effort, especially everything in coreutils.


GNU software can be relegated to gcc and the history books.
 
Linux, the distribution, is the de facto name used.

A lot of people call the OS which is GNU with Linux, the kernel "Linux", but nobody claims that "Linux" is a distribution. Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Trisquel (currently my favorite), BLAG, and gNewSense are distributions of GNU/Linux.


As an aside, the name matters because people (I get the feeling you're one of them) don't understand just how important GNU is to what they call "Linux". Because without GNU, Linux, the kernel, would just be some random (likely proprietary) alternative kernel for UNIX.

GNU software for an OS _is_ complete crap and I welcome every replacement effort, especially everything in coreutils.


GNU software can be relegated to gcc and the history books.

Allow me to ask again: what replacement is there for GNU? All I can think of is Android, and that's hardly a useful OS for desktop PCs.


I really don't see you eye-to-eye on GNU sucking; it's a much better OS than Windows is, IMO. But here's another thought: it's free software. If it sucks so bad, it can be modified. That would be a sight more efficient than creating another entirely new OS from scratch, which took around 8 years in the case of GNU. Plus, any gripes you have with GNU are very likely just with a few programs (though I don't know what they would be, since you haven't mentioned why GNU is "complete crap").
 
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Linux is not a distribution but a kernel. If there is any "name grab", it is the other way around: the GNU project was announced in 1983, the first Linux kernels are from 1991, you do the math. I don't mind if people accidentally call their favorite GNU/Linux distribution "Linux", but don't get pedantic and insist that that is the correct name, because it clearly isn't. You can just as well call Apple's Mac OS X "Mach", since that is the name of its kernel. Don't confuse the kernel, the OS, and the distribution: these are three different things. Linux is not an OS, and it certainly is not a distribution.


I also strongly disagree that GNU software is "complete crap". Do you even realize what I hugely sweeping comment that is? From ls, cp and bash to The GIMP, from autoconf and gcc to emacs and mc, from bc to gnumeric, etc. etc. do you even realize the scope of what the GNU project is?


What is wrong with coreutils? Why do you think it needs to be replaced?
 
Indeed. Please clarify what is so crappy about GNU. In my opinion, Linux has little value without GNU.
 
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