ED: I suffer from stress too. I don't intend to respond directly to you right now as I don't believe you would appreciate/want it, and I don't need the extra stress of trying to politely correct you, pointlessly.
amf66 said:
Paint does not mean that the plastic is bad quality. Also, what's wrong with patching the first 700 (or is it 800) boards with an extra resistor? I'm sure Michael will do a good job, and the resistors are so small that it seems impossible for the solder joint to break and for them to fall off. I would go on, but it's useless to argue with people like Monk.
Paint does NOT mean, in and of itself, that the plastic is bad quality. You are quite, quite right on that. However - the plastics company have reputedly been trying (and failing) to get the case to look as good as OpenPandora expected. Trying to minimise areas where the case is of uneven colour for no known reason, where you can see structure from the other side, where... where there are "issues". Things that might make MWeston frown. Although we seem to get contradictory reports from different members of OpenPandora about who did or said what, it appears to me from what I've read that the factory have attempted this paint job specifically to cover up blemishes on the case, to make it look better. I don't have the experience to say if it's their cooling procedure which is to blame for the blemishes, or the speed they run the machines, or the design of the molds - or even if such blemishes are truly, REALLY unavoidable due to the design of the case (this being distinct from the design of the molds, and distinct from what is "commercially viable" at this stage) but it does seem VERY clear that the paint job is an after-thought which has come about purely and simply to hide blemishes.
This does NOT mean that a paint job is a bad thing, or that it is a good thing. It is what it is. That it has taken until now to consider it I feel is a poor show. I am in no position to say go for it or do not go for it - that is outside my scope at this point, and outside my interest. I do hope that it does not introduce excessive delays (for example, if tolerances are an issue that need to be "worked around"). If offered a choice between a good looking bit of kit or a manky looking bit of kit, with no other considerations, obviously I would opt for the better looking bit of kit, personally. With no considerations other than delivery dates 2 months apart, I would also opt for the delivery two months earlier. These things usually are not seperate
Likewise, I'm not sure I've said that it's necessarily a bad thing per se to "patch" 700 boards with a resistor... I have asked, I suspect, how many units are to be patched this way. On the WiFi issue I feel I'm on slightly higher ground, since I was one of those who, months and months ago, worried that it sounded like a hardware issue could be involved - and spoke up to say so, and was slammed down by OpenPandora who insisted that there was NO hardware fault. Now, we find there is a hardware fault I am uncomfortable with how quickly OpenPandora have returned to "we've fixed it, it's all good, the numbers seem slow but there is no hardware issue!". Because that is almost word-for-word what they said LAST time they reported that they had "fixed the WiFi issue" (or POSSIBLY the time before that they reported such - I'd have to search for quotes to be certain how many times they have reportedly "fixed" WiFi). I wish I felt more confident that they HAVE actually fixed it, rather than bodged it to be "good enough for the forum dwellers".
That's point one - is the hardware FULLY fixed, really truly honestly by this patch resistor? The second point that comes readily to mind was "how many Pandoras are going to be patched" as opposed to modifying the PCB design/instructing the PCB manufacturer how to better produce the PCBs. I have not noticed an answer to this, but as the PCB population line has, I believe, been given the green light I must assume that all 4000 first batch boards will be so patched, unless otherwise informed. Many of them by the PCB populating factory (so hopefully reducing the Human Error strain on MWeston, from that point on). We have also been previously told that components - some at least, but presumably not all - have been ordered for the second and IIRC even third batches. Does that include the PCBs being this current revision, so that the second and perhaps third batches might also include this resistor "patch"? I was just trying to get a handle on how they are dealing with this seemingly minor issue from that direction.
Thirdly - for the first 500, or 700, or 800 or 1000 or however many it REALLY turns out to be, that MWeston is going to have to do himself, manually, whilst in England. From his commants, and yes even the suggestion of rerouting the PCBs through Turkey to take the load off him, correcting the boards isn't fun. It's painstaking, tedious, boring work. Exactly the type of work that is prone to leading to the phrase "Human Error". While MWeston seems the most interested in having the Pandora be of the highest possible quality, drudgery takes it's toll. I don't envy him the task, or even the recipients of those specific units which, it seems to me, are more likely to suffer issues than later units may be. This is NOT a personal swipe at MWeston's soldering skills, but is the closest I can get (when coupled with the earlier points) to explaining my unease at the patch for early boards.
Chairman_Now said:
Most of all, please don't get all revisionist about who the intended audience is or was. I can't find anything about the unit being "mainly for fans of homebrew and opensource... who don't care if the software doesn't run 100% from the beginning" in any of your press, or anywhere on the promotional website (the English language one, at any rate). It wasn't sold to me that way, although I did understand that this was a large part of the early audience. And I really don't want to hear the glib crap about buying an Apple product, or hearing about other products that shipped broken. I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into, and I still think that this entire process was totally messed up.
There was originally, on this forum (and nowhere else AFAIK), some emphasis on targeting the forum members who knew that it would not run software 100% from day one (silly "software is never finished" comments aside). However, the OpenPandora sales website, other review sites, even this forum in more recent months (or last year anyway) and indeed the little cardboard advert that Craig sent out with products ordered from his store HAVE all advertised it as being a professional, quality and yes "finsihed" product. Even on this forum complete clueless newbies have been advised to get the Pandora because it is SO much better than products from Apple et al. So IMHO it's a bit of a tricky subject, and like many Pandora specifics we can probably all find quotes that support pretty much any point of view, if we wanted to.
benji_stein said:
2) You say to add on the silk screen would only delay by three additional days? I'm very confused by this. Previously, we were told that we were skipping the silkscreening because it would have to be shipped to another location, screened, and shipped back, which you estimated would take on the order of a month. That's not the situation anymore? What happened?
...
Monk - I value your opinion, and I would definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts on this when you feel more up to it. And no, I'm not being sarcastic.
Thanks kindly - I hope I have answered fully above (more than fully. More than intended!). With regard to the 3 days MWeston mentions, I believe those are for painting the case a solid black colour, not for silkscreening. The last time I heard, silkscreening was done by an outside company and this is why delays on that specific task tended to... stretch
That painting the case a solid black in-house could be faster than sending cases out to be delicately silkscreened (then checked, then adjusted, then sent back out to have another silkscreen attempt and so on) seems plausable. Personally I thought being silkscreened was a better idea than not, but the potential delays must have been frightening.
Vorporeal said:
If you bothered to read all of that, thank you. If not, so be it. Hopefully this'll get people to calm down a bit - in all likelihood, nobody'll give two shits about what I wrote. I'd just like to have some sane, calm, thoughtful, and productive discussions here.
P.S.: Monk, please don't make any decisions that you'll regret. I know that you love this project, but I can tell that you're sick of dealing with all of the drama and bullshit that comes with it. I'm not trying to convince you either way, I just want to make sure that you take a bit of time to cool off and reassess the situation (maybe take a week or two off and see what happens?), as you've waited for a good year and a half (I'm assuming you're a first day preorderer too). Just imagine if you ordered the Pandora and didn't read the forums at all. You wouldn't know about any of the shit that happened in the background, and one day, a Pandora arrives, and it's everything you ever wanted. Try not to let the means get in the way of the end.
P.P.S.: It's really late at night, so if most of this shit doesn't make sense, I'm sorry. I'm just pained to see so many people who really care about this project have such negative feelings about it. Maybe we should all take a week or two off. (Except for the OP team, you guys aren't getting any slack.
)
Thanks accepted! There aren't that many posters who are worth completely ignoring, and so longer posts TEND to be more, not less, worthwhile. IMHO. But I may be biased as a poster of long posts...
On decisions, it's now out of my hand. I suffer from stress on a physical level, to the point where I have previously been rushed to hospital by ambulance, gushing blood from both ends. Literally. If you want to be so scared that you piss yourself, and then find that scares you even more, I can recommend some ailments to help you achieve it. In combination they can be quite, quite effective. Stress levels, not limited to but including the BS that goes on around this project, is the reason I've taken two breaks from the forums recently, as I wish to avoid having that particular experience again. Pain levels have been quite, quite bad in recent months, sadly
and backing down/away is one coping mechanism. I actually came back yesterday from about a week's leave - from the board, from my home. A week away - just the thing to relax! I didn't place the order, so it is down to my wife now. Will she think I am going to live longer and healthier without the online drama, or with it? Having any member of OpenPandora rant at me certainly isn't MY idea of fun, and it's not what interested us in the device in the first place (when it was being estimated that delivery would occur before Christmas 2008, IIRC).
Yes, we were an EARLY pre-order. That is one reason that the quality of early first batch units is of particular interest to me. My wife's out, at work. I won't be able to find out for several hours whether we've cancelled already, or not.
Tor said:
And don't forget that 11g doesn't give you 5MB/s as the 54Mb/s may indicate. On a standard 802.11g network you'll get around 22Mb/s, i.e. around 2.7MB/s theoretical maximum transfer rate.
Many thanks for that
Full speed on anything is rarely possibly in real life. It just seems to me that 500KB/s is a long way down from the impossible 5MB/s. It seems quite a long way down from your suggested 22Mb/s.
EvilDragon said:
What I didn't like about the post was that "unauthorised".
We did make clear that the Pandora has to be paid in advance because the actual costs are used for production and parts - and we surely couldn't have done it with that money.
So that money was not unauthorised - as we didn't take that money away from anyone, it was the choice of each user to take the risk and pay us - or not.
Sigh. Please stop twisting what I say. Saying that I said you would not take preorder money does not make it true. Not even close.
OpenPandora said that delivery was aimed for before Christmas 2008. Craig also personally promised that you would NOT take preorder money and then take "months" to deliver the actual hardware. Do I need to look up the quotes? So you needed preorder money. No worries. A couple of months? No problem. 18 Months? If you'd asked for money for 18 Months plus (we don't have any retail Pandoras yet!) then you would have seen me 18 months later. If you arrange a loan or overdraft with a bank for two months and you do not pay it in over 18 months then "Unauthorised" is EXACTLY what they call it - and exactly why I used that term.
There's a whole lot I don't like about some of YOUR posts - telling me what I should and shouldn't buy among them. But I'm trying to avoid a point-for-point war of words.
For the majority - this community has once again surprised me at how good it is at avoiding fisticuffs at high noon. My thanks to those who haven't taken an anti-Monk stance.
