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[Nintendo]

I nearly went mad with todays readings ... i really had to turn off for a few hours and come back to reread everything ,i also can fully understand Monk or anyone else and Sony should shut up little child like person.

RULE NUMBER 1: You can't shut the fanboys up.

 

[kingoddball]

+1 to SONY!

 

[paddy]

No but i can make them cry ?

Anyway i hope Monk Doesn't cancel ,this is hell but it WILL be worth it ,i know the Pandora will not be the perfect device we thought it was going to be nearly two yesrs ago but it's still way off the radar ,take time and think ,sleep on it even ,Monk your points are quite valid and i agree with you ,it's sad that for an open project like this people still squirm when OPT enter the conversation instead of getting down to hard facts and feelings ,we all feel strongly about this project and it's tough but it WILL be worth it.

peace all including my pal SONY

 

[VRAndy]

^^ Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Haha! Yes! It's funny because you're mocking someone who has legitimate concerns with a multitude of broken promises from a company he's purchasing a product from!

Haha! It's funny because he's legitimately unhappy and disappointed!

You guys have made a great product and have shown that the customer comes first (especially you, ED!).

I dunno. I'm not convinced that they've shown that clearly.

You're not alone - it's bothersome to have to type "The Chinese factory which has been contracted to make the molds and cases" and "the people at The Chinese Factory that has been contracted to make the molds and plastic cases" and "The Chinese Factory which was contracted to manufacture the PCBs" and so forth. As is very obvious from context, a simple "The Chinese" from most REASONABLE people is BLATANTLY shorthand, as none of us believes that every single person in such a huge country could possibly even be aware of the Pandora, much less have a hand in making them. However, it is convenient for others to misunderstand in order to take cheap shots and misdirect.

Why not say "The factory"? It's just as easy, and it separates you from the many otherwise "reasonable" people on these forums who are using the exact same phrase you are to criticize the honesty and work ethic of an entire nationality and/or ethnicity?

If the factory was in Zimbabwe would you say "Once again, you can't trust those lazy black people not to screw things up!"?

(Also good : "Plastics shop")

 

[paddy]

+10 VRAndy

the case factory would have been fine or the factory.

 

[WizardStan]

ED's tone in response to my issues was MY final straw.

If it makes you feel in any way better, Firefox does, in fact, run quite adequately on my BeagleBoard. It's not a ram issue keeping it from being used, it's just not as quick as it used to be. Firefox is very usable, Midori is just smaller and a little more responsive.
I've got 4 tabs open (gp32x, gmail, google, and youtube (no flash though, keep in mind)) and it's only using 65 megs of ram. The RAM isn't a problem, it's the 1 second response time when I try to switch tabs, or the extra few seconds it takes for it to drop that yellow bar telling me I'm missing a plugin. Firefox runs quite well, Midori just runs a little better. Those same four tabs only take up 48 megs of ram. Firefox takes up 25 megs on disk, Midori only takes 4.
There are practical reasons to make Midori (or some other extremely lightweight browser) the default. At the very least, it frees up about 20 MB on the NAND for other things to be included, and Firefox can later be repackaged as a PND file.

 

[amf66]

Guys, I'm sorry about being quick to judge. Next time I'll think before I post.

@Monk: I hope you can accept my apology for being a jerk.

 

[Monk]

@Monk: I hope you can accept my apology for being a jerk.

Not a problem. Normally I'd be quite happy to argue with you about the pros and cons of a patch resistor on all of the first and second (and third?) batches, and why I feel the paint job to be a cover up, but I don't think today is the day for it. It's tomorrow here already, and I should be sleeping this off

I wish I could blame substance abuse for how I feel

If it makes you feel in any way better, Firefox does, in fact, run quite adequately on my BeagleBoard. It's not a ram issue keeping it from being used, it's just not as quick as it used to be. Firefox is very usable, Midori is just smaller and a little more responsive.

Only a little, but that little is appreciated. I was only going by what ED had mentioned recently about why FireFox was dumped - that it was a RAM hog IIRC. My bad, probably.

There are practical reasons to make Midori (or some other extremely lightweight browser) the default. At the very least, it frees up about 20 MB on the NAND for other things to be included, and Firefox can later be repackaged as a PND file.

Although there's plenty to agree with, I suspect the less I say, the better.

Why not say "The factory"? It's just as easy, and it separates you from the many otherwise "reasonable" people on these forums who are using the exact same phrase you are to criticize the honesty and work ethic of an entire nationality and/or ethnicity?

Is anyone REALLY that... racist? (Apart from SONY?). That's a sad thought.

I think "The factory" would probably be the best phrase myself (except where one means the factory boss, or the workers, or...) but I suspect that we are lead by OpenPandora, who have referred to them as The Chinese Factory or just The Chinese on occasion, IIRC. It's easy to feel one is using a shared vocabulary and fall into the trap of using shorthand that can be abused out of the context of such a shared shorthand.

 

[crade]

it separates you from the many otherwise "reasonable" people on these forums who are using the exact same phrase you are to criticize the honesty and work ethic of an entire nationality and/or ethnicity?

If the factory was in Zimbabwe would you say "Once again, you can't trust those lazy black people not to screw things up!"?

Haha! Yes! It's funny because you're making out people who have legitimate concerns with government's policies to be racist!

Haha! It's funny because employment laws and policy actually have a large impact on quality of products as well as the health and safety of the workers. ah!

 

[VRAndy]

it separates you from the many otherwise "reasonable" people on these forums who are using the exact same phrase you are to criticize the honesty and work ethic of an entire nationality and/or ethnicity?

If the factory was in Zimbabwe would you say "Once again, you can't trust those lazy black people not to screw things up!"?

Haha! Yes! It's funny because you're making out people who have legitimate concerns with government's policies to be racist!

Haha! It's funny because employment laws and policy actually have a large impact on quality of products as well as the health and safety of the workers. ah!

Oooo. Ouch. I think I've just been hit with double-sarcasm. Zing.


...

...

...

However, at the risk of seeming like a poor sport, I feel I should point out that it would have worked better if you'd quoted a post where I was actually making a joke about racism. (In questionable taste.)

...

But I do grant the point that there are legitimate reasons to be at least slightly suspicious of goings on in China. Especially if you're concerned for the well-being of the workers. (And really, we ought to be.)

 

[sepp256]

It looks like ED just updated the "Current Status" page. After re-reading it, I again can't wait to have my Pandora in my hands!!

I definitely want the case painting because it looks supurb!! My only concern is whether the keyboard button action will be messed up if there isn't as much clearance after paint is applied. Can the factory try to not coat the side-walls with much paint, which might hurt the keyboard?

From MWeston's earlier post, it sounds like the silk screening is improving... What does OPT think about allowing silk screening after the first 1000 cases are done/shipped if the Chinese Factory gets the silk screening right by then?

@Everyone: Stay cool and hang in there! The Pandoras are coming soon, and they will be more than worth the wait!

 

[LuvClub]

In my opinion this fanboy-ism needs to stop. It beggars belief how brain washed some of you are in your unfounded belief in everything the OP team does and says. How could people criticize Monk for cancelling his order or make snide remarks in relation to his fair comments which he had every right to make after "loaning" his money interest-free for 2 years? We should all be grateful for people like him otherwise the project may not have been able to finance itself to this stage. It is just not right to be so ungrateful and we shouldn't stoop to Craig's level.

 

[calc84maniac]

Looking at the Current Status page, it says that keymat production is complete?

 

[droneb]

only if they said we're adding silk screen again it would make my day better, this gloomy day got me way too hostile
(i should apologize on being too hostile not to what i said)
all this wet makes me sleepy and moody.

i want my silkscreen!!

 

[VRAndy]

i want my silkscreen!!

I want my Pandora!

 

[MarkoeZ]

still waiting, slightly annoyed, highly excited

Oh and while i'm posting: I'll take mine unpainted if it saves any time (should be well up in the first 1000). That's all tested properly, and as said a couple of mm could just make the difference.

 

[sepp256]

i want my silkscreen!!

I agree. The Pandora is an amazing gadget already, but it's best to just do it right from the beginning. And we're sooo close!

 

[elinscheid]

Thank you Ed and Michael. I know it is tough to deal with the stress of making a product from scratch and I know that it is tough to deal with all of us on the forum. Thank you for not giving up on finishing the Pandora. Thank you for not throwing in the towel, sending our money back and telling us all to F*ck off. All of the people at the OPT have shown strength and resolve.

I'm not kissing anyone's ass. I simply want the OPT to hear from someone who is honestly positive and has faith in this project.

are you the first gp32x forum member? your profile is older than ED and craig's...
damn... you are old... hhahaha

I joined back when I first heard about the GP32. When the Zodiac came out I purchased one and was active on Zodiacgamer.com. After the Zod scene died off I purchased a GP2X. It broke so I decided to switch to the Dingoo. Now I'm playing with my A320 until the Pandora comes out. Now you have me feeling all nostalgic. Has anyone heard from Prophet lately? Did he fall off the face of the Earth? I think I will power up my Zod this evening...

 

[EvilDragon]

I don't have an iPad. I ordered a bit of kit from some tech savvy guys who were pouring scorn on GPH and saying how much better they would do it. They would make a better product, without the technical or design flaws, and without taking our money months before delivering the promised kit. I'm dissapointed it'll have a repaired PCB and paint to cover up the quality of the plastic.

Well, and that's what you get. Oh, and we NEVER said you have to pay when you get it. It was clear from the VERY BEGINNING that you have to pay in advance.
Please never open up any of your devices, you'll find A LOT of modifications, especially on first release devices. And even if you don't find some - that doesn't mean it hasn't been done, as you cannot see that a resistor has been replaced if it was done properly.

The PCB will not bee repaired, the PCB is fine. There is simply one resistor that needs to have another value and that one is being replaced. That's a common thing to do.

The quality of the plastic is fine, it's sturdy, it doesn't break, there is no problem. But due to the nature of moulding, some things can be seen through the case.
You think painting is covering up? Hell, I did check a few devices I own at home.
My mobile phone is painted. My notebook is painted. My Nintendo DS is painted. Even my Logitech mouse does use paint. Just because you don't know there is no paint doesn't mean it is not there.

Speaking of GPH:
The GP2X First Edition did have a wrong resistor. However, those were delivered with the wrong resistor (leading to much too dark colors and flickering LCDs) and I had to change them all afterwards.
We could've done so with the WiFi resistor, however, we chose to fix it before delivery. Do you think that's wrong?

And by design and technical flaws from GPH products, we were talking about stuff like...

* Unusable stick for gaming (GP2X F100)
* DPAD not that great either (GP2X F200)
* Wrong type of LCD used (240x320 instead of 320x240, leading to tearing or workarounds)

That's something the Pandora certainly doesn't suffer from.
So yeah, you still get exactly the same what we announced you will get when you ordered.

My last mobile phone crashes about twice a week until I updated the firmware, my Cable TV receiver did crash when I tried to move the channels around...

You maybe make some bad decisions.

You have convinced me. I'll tell the wife to cancel our Pandora order the moment she gets home.

Yeah, Sony Ericsson (Phone) and Thomson (Cable Receiver) seems like a bad choice.

While it is sad you cancel, I can't say anything against it, as you probably aren't the user the first batch was intended for.
The first batch is mainly for fans of homebrew and opensource, geeks and similar folks who don't care if the software doesn't run 100% from the beginning.
The hardware will be fine, we fixed everything up, so there's no problem anymore.

Electronics and software is becoming more and more complicated these days, it's impossible NOT doing anything wrong

Well, with that attitude - certainly!

It's not about attitude - in fact, I think our attitude is fine here, as we ARE fixing up everything before we ship.

Show me ONE recent device that didn't have problems with the first release edition... I can't find many (except for simple devices)

iPad? Suffers WiFi problems (just check google)
Sony PSP? Also had troubles (terrible LCD, buttons were squeaking, etc.)
XBox360? Tons of them suffered the Red Ring of Death.

Those are all devices from multi billion dollar companies.
They couldn't do it right - even with A LOT more people working on it and A LOT more money to build such thing.

Now here we are. A bunch of guys trying to create the best OpenSource handheld gaming device available. And I think we did well. Even the prototype case is sturdy and fine. The hardware is fast enough to run a full desktop without lagging.
The gaming controls work perfectly, way better than on any other handheld I own.

You were able to follow our steps, our trials, our problems. We did fix EVERYTHING there was, did try to do our best. In our sparetime. With very little money. If we were multi billion dollar companies, we could've produced those cases outside of China. They would've been finished long ago and probably would look perfect. I'm really sorry I do not have a few million dollar lying around. I'm sorry we're just some normal guys trying as hard as we can creating the Pandora. Maybe you did expect some gods. Well, we are no gods. And we never claimed we are.

Still, looking at the market, I do think we did extremely well with the Pandora. Whereever I have a presentation with my prototype, it interests a lot of people and they would buy it instantly if I had some with me.
We fixed everything BEFORE delivery, I honestly do think that's not something to be blamed for.

If you do think so - well, I can't help it. I can't do miracles.

My mobile phone cannot do WiFi. It's a mobile phone, not a handheld computer. I could maybe do a test on my netbook though, if you really want to see if 500KB/s is a reasonable expactation from a chipset that specifies what, 54 Mb/s? (your web site says it is 802.11b/g, which should be able to go faster, I propose, than 500KB/s).

It should go faster and it can probably go faster, yes.
A netbook is bigger, it has more power.
I talked to some other guys regarding that issue, as similar sized devices also won't go faster:
The reason they do 802.11g is that no other devices are slowed down.

A normal router cannot do 802.11b and 802.11g at the same time. So if a device connects with 802.11b, it would slow down ALL traffic for ALL devices, as the router always switches to the connection of the slowest device.

Most devices that do have our size won't go higher than 900KB/s.
This can be due to various reasons: One reason would be to save power (as small devices don't have such big batteries as netbooks) and the other reason is the bus / cpu / RAM, etc.
Just because the module can make a througput of maybe 5MB/s doesn't mean the CPU or bus system can't process all of it.
You can't compare your netbook to a small ARM CPU. The OMAP is very powerful, yes, but still slower than an ARM is.
One thing we know is that the CPU speed affects the WiFi speed on our unit. Increasing the CPU does increase the WiFi speed and vice versa.
And in minimal mode, the WiFi speed is even faster, maybe because the CPU doesn't need to power an X Server.

Even the WiFi stick I did use didn't go higher than 900KB/s - and that one supports 802.11n.

So yes, you get what you paid for: 802.11b/g
But that doesn't mean you can always automatically expect full speed with it.
Most devices in that form factor can't provide much more.

We can probably reach that 900KB/s by working more on the software - but I doubt we will ever squeeze much more out of it.

Please take an unauthorised loan from me for two years. Oh, wait... you did/ After promising that you wouldn't.

You're trying to compare approx. 300 EUR to about 500.000 USD? Wow.

And what unauthorised loan? You paid for the device, we clearly said that the money will be used to actually produce the Pandora and you could always cancel your order.
There was nothing unauthorised.
There were some people who did cancel their order and they got their money back.

Complaining about stuff that has been said from the very beginning is dumb.

However, using the cheapest possible source for everything does not guarantee the highest possible quality result. Take the Chinese plastics factory you are using. How has that worked out for you? Or even the specific chinese PCB vendor you used? Have they worked as well as the USA company that you did the prototyping with? My issue isn't with you getting stuff made in China. My issue is with you sayign that you wouldn't get stuff made CHEAPLY in China, but made to high quality in America, and THEN going and getting stuff made CHEAPLY in China. You get what you pay for.

Well, every moulding company outside of China did want at least 10x as much money for the job. Yes, we would've loved to do that - however, if there is no money, you don't have that option.

We did say that we WON'T DO the main production in China, and yes, in fact, that's what we did. And we did say that we try to do as little as possible in China - and that's also what we did.
We did source the prices for producing outside and it would've meant that one Pandora would've cost at least 600 - 700 EUR each.

The production itself is still being done in Texas, as the population of the boards is the most critical part.
BTW: That the production of the PCBs happens in China is not because we said so. We don't even know WHO produces the PCBs, as we did place our order for the PCBs and the population with the US company in Texas. They are working together with a Chinese partner company, and they produce the PCBs. And yes, they have worked as well as the USA company we did the prototyping with. The quality of the PCBs is top-notch. The changed impedance of one trace is something we didn't specifically tell them it shouldn't change, so this could've happened with any other company, too. And in the end it turned out the impedance doesn't do much - it was a resistor with a wrong value, and that's nothing anyone else except for us was responsible.

Ah, the wife is home now. so I can type here and say to her at the same time - EvilDragon recommends that we get a full refund.

I never recommended that you do so - I just told you the truth about our device and what I do think about the situation.

If you have problems with devices which have some flaws at the beginning, you should NEVER be an early adopter. That's not specifically for the Pandora, that's the fact for EVERY device out there.
I love to be an early adopter, I can live with flaws or even did fix quite a few myself by opening up and modding some devices. But if you 100% a fully flawless device regarding hardware and software, you should NEVER ever buy ANY new device that's just been released, be it from Apple, Sony, Microsoft or anyone else.

I remember being told that Pandora had AMPLE RAM to do anything you'd want to with it - before the amount of RAM was doubled. Why is FireFox not the default browser? Because it uses too much RAM?????
I barely even care about FireFox - except how it figures into what we're being told. The last I heard about browser OpenPandora were pleased as punch that the Pandora ran FireFox - and so well! The next I notice FireFox has been replaced because it is too RAM hungry (after being told no-one would ever need more than 640KB) and its replacement is being replaced because it was too unstable. There seems to be no stability of vision to a product which is already a year and a half late.
A year and a half ago it would have shipped with FireFox. So... that would have been a bad decision, yes?

It does run very well for a mobile device. It's definately fast enough to be usable by anyone. But why use a bloated sluggish browser if there are FASTER ones?
FireFox NEVER was the default or only browser on the system. Midori was there from the very beginning, and we just scrapped FireFox because...

1. it's slower than other, faster browsers and needs more RAM than others
2. it needs a lot of space on the NAND, and we want the user to decide what to do with the space
3. it can be reinstalled with a single command if one specifically wants it

Except for some extensions, I cannot find a single reason why people would want to use FireFox over any other faster working browser on the Pandora.
For me, FireFox is too slow on my fast desktop PC (Intel T7500). I use Opera and / or Midori.

So, could you please tell a single reason (me now that I explained this to you) why FireFox should stay on the system a default browser?

Arora is faster, needs less RAM, does display all websites flawlessly (same rendering engine as FireFox), has an Adblocker, can also do tabbed browsing, has a private mode.
The only thing it CAN'T do is use extensions or special scripts. Unless you seriously need them, there's no need to use FireFox.

 

[DaveC]

You can't please everyone. People these days get spoiled by the sheer number of cheap gadgets streaming out of China these days as well as all of the Apple iGadgets.

I guess the Pandora isn't for everyone. If you want perfection, buy Apple. It amazes me that people expect us to do the same thing as good and as fast as a multi-BILLION dollar mega corporation like Apple or Sony, Nintendo etc. We try but you just can't beat reality and physics.

As for the paint idea I don't think it is a good idea. The main reason is that paint rubbing in the hinge area doesn't sound like it will work well.