New Blog Post!

[Sugar_Kane]

Well, I guess I'm the one to blame for some near-heartattacks in the community today.
If you ever see me in real life, you're all liable to smack me

It might start out as a smack, but inevitably end up as a tearful hug, and a wistful gaze into your eyes

 

[-Tj-]

Personally, I was rather looking forward to the unpainted, unsilkscreened cases. I'm gonna mod mine up anyway, so paint on paint isn't going to go well in my favor where tolerances are concerned. If you guys do go with the painted cases, would it be possible to keep a few spares on hand for sale that aren't painted or silkscreened?

 

[MWeston]

So.. I'm slightly confused... are case samples that need approval shipping on the 17th/20th - or are a pallet with 1,000+ cases shipping on that date?

I may have answered you on the blog, but basically they are fully capable of assembling some test units there in China using the parts I sent ages ago and confirm the cases don't scrape parts or bulge out with everything inside. I have no reason to get cases here in Canada since I'm not going to use the cases to send to devs. They need to be boxed up and sent to England for real production now.

Those dates I listed are the days that they should be shipping large volumes to England, not samples.

 

[jonlad1]

Wicked post Michael, thanks for that.

I think you have calmed some nerves today.

Dont worry ED, you can only post what you know at the time.

 

[MooTheKow]

So.. I'm slightly confused... are case samples that need approval shipping on the 17th/20th - or are a pallet with 1,000+ cases shipping on that date?

I may have answered you on the blog, but basically they are fully capable of assembling some test units there in China using the parts I sent ages ago and confirm the cases don't scrape parts or bulge out with everything inside. I have no reason to get cases here in Canada since I'm not going to use the cases to send to devs. They need to be boxed up and sent to England for real production now.

Those dates I listed are the days that they should be shipping large volumes to England, not samples.

Thanks - Appreciate the timely and thorough answer- that's good news.

 

[foxblock]

@foxblock: want to buy some magic beans?

Thanks for unnecessary sarcastic comment, but as you can see the situation already resolved itself
Good thing we are patient enough and don't rush out angrily...

 

[Snow-Okami]

Oh goodness... thank you MWeston, you saved me from nearly jumping out of a 10 story building.

 

[Jumpman]

Well guys and gals, I just woke up and read thru 7 pages of the new blog update, and I'm speechless! NO, Not really!

First, let me thank Ed, and Michael for doing there best to keep everyone informed. Ed, please don't beat yourself up for giving information that everyone wants. It is not your fault, you seem to be as unimformed as the reat of us at times. If more information was giving on a daily bases, I don't belive these kinds of problems would happen, but I'm sure many will debate that. Please don't bother, I'm not going to argue with anyone here!

I get the privledge of commenting after seeing all the info, so I won't speak on who's right and who's wrong, that's pointless anyways.

I would like to comment on what I have read. Once again the mould factory boggles the mind. Am I missing something here, and maybe a team member will explain in better details, but how do we go from shipping a 1000 units on or around the 26th of last month, to now still waiting until the 17th or the 20th for what I'm guessing is still just 1000 cases? Did they throw out the ones from that early batch(whos paying for all these mistakes and revisions?) Most of the information you guys give, I can read inbetween the lines and form a decent opinion, but the mould factory news never ever makes any logical sense! From what I have read from Michael, the team is having a similar problem, which at this point really has to be addressed in my opinion. There is NO WAY THE TEAM WILL EVER MAKE THIS PROJECT PROFITABLE DEALING WITH THIS CURRENT MOULD FACTORY AND THIS CURRENT STATE OF COMMUNICATIONS!

I say ship the first 1000 cases UNPAINTED, because there is NO WAY IN HELL those guys are going to paint a thousand units properly in 4 days time. That is impossible, and if anyone believes they can, they have not been watching the same comedy/drama/reality television that I have for the last 2 years. And if they do paint them in 4 days, the quality will be SHIT! If by some miracle they actually ship some cases within the next month, I see the remaining 3000 cases taking until Christmas to finally ship.

The boards are on the way, Michael is doing the fix, more boards will be coming in short order. GREAT NEWS! :lol: A year long WiFi problem has been solved, and still we are having the same fucking problems coming from China. WTF! Cases may ship this week, they may not. Once they arrive, the paint may cause problems, may not! This information just isn't really that great to me. There is still way to many variables that involve this mould company.

I think the plain cases looked nice and sturdy. They showed some imperfections, but nothing the average consumer would really notice or care about. This paint idea looked sweet, but that was one case, that they more than likely took there time painting to look PERFECT! I say go with the originals, order the reaming 9000 ASAP. Then let those guys spend the next 12 months perfecting there ideas and processes for the 10,001+ units, if the team actually ever needs more. Which at the rate they are going, I hate to say it, but I dont see needing any units over 10,000 anytime soon.

2 weeks guys, probably not! Thanks for trying!

Chris

 

[Sugar_Kane]

I really hope this isn't a case of the factory covering the fact that they still haven't finished by claiming that they are really trying to take steps to make them perfect. I wonder whether, if you had asked them to ship immediately, they would have said 'ah... well... about that... yea we've only made twelve, and the cat was sick on one of them'

 

[Esn]

Mm, yeah. Trusting the factory about how long something is really going to take seems a bit naive at this point... I'll bet that "4 days" is a best-case scenario.

 

[Bosbeetle]

Maybe the case factory is carefully reverse engineering the boards, and they already have the cases just kidding

 

[torpor]

Paranoid Mode: What if the factory is stalling on delivering the cases so that one of their sister companies has more time to produce a clone of the PCB? Hmm ..

 

[mali]

^ The PCB isn't populated, btw. Just the critical parts to check if it fits.

 

[WoD]

Send me an unpainted Pandora. Tell me what paint to paint it with. And sell spare cases just in case I screw it up!

I wish I could say that I'm sick and tired of waiting, but this whole thing is mildly entertaining and the excruciating wait for the iPad is serving well to distract me. Still, I must say thank god the just release MacBook Pro updates are rubbish or I might have considered pulling out to fund a new workstation.

@ Pandora team, I'm still amazed you guys have got this far without having a complete and total breakdown. As always I eagerly await holding the fruit of your labours in my hands and raving about it at Gadgetoid. Thanks for hanging in there! Hopefully you'll see enough raw monetary appreciation to make a Pandora 2 possible, and hopefully by then you'll still be crazy enough to pull it off!

 

[EvilDragon]

@ Pandora team, I'm still amazed you guys have got this far without having a complete and total breakdown. As always I eagerly await holding the fruit of your labours in my hands and raving about it at Gadgetoid. Thanks for hanging in there! Hopefully you'll see enough raw monetary appreciation to make a Pandora 2 possible, and hopefully by then you'll still be crazy enough to pull it off!

I can't speak for the others, but I can tell you what's it that keeps me going:
The Pandora. Having the prototype at home, enhancing the OS, playing games... it always brings me back to "Wow! This really is cool! It's worth all the trouble".
Also, whenever I go to some presentation and have it with me, people fall for it. That shows it REALLY is cool.

That's what's always keeping me alive when things go bad. Seeing it does work so well

 

[Sugar_Kane]

I want to state right now that I refuse to hold craig's fruits

 

[quartercast]

+1 for the paint job, I think it looks great.

To all those who don't want their Pandora painted, send your unit to me and I'll dunk it in some dichloromethane.

 

[fusion_power]

MWestons big post really was informative. Thx. I also would ask the Chinese Factory how durable the paint is, good Idea to test it with stickers and scratching. Sweat can be really agressive so I hope at least they DON'T paint the D-Pad and the ABXY Buttons.

Those dates I listed are the days that they should be shipping large volumes to England, not samples.

You know this, we know this but do the chinese Factory this also know this time?

 

[bradleyb01]

Thanks MWeston and ED. Next time I work until 2 AM, I will not respond to blog posts, I will wait until morning. 20 hour work days sometimes makes me grumpy...

 

[torpor]

^ The PCB isn't populated, btw. Just the critical parts to check if it fits.

Really? WTF?! Makes it easier to copy!