Noob Questions

[luke v2]

Hellollo!

Im interested in the pandora (i love all gadgets ) but not being a programmer or having much computor knowledge (specs wise, though i do have some very very very low level visual basic) i struggle to understand whats going on at the moment. So I thought id ask, for answers in laymans terms:

How powerful is the pandora and what will it definitely be able to emulate up to?
- how easy will it be to install the emulators? i cant get the one i have for my pc to work (epsxe )
- how easy will it be to download games? will they have to be special pandora versions?
- will it every be able to run older pc games, such as roller coaster tycoon / championship manager 98 (or earlier) ? (im doubting it will run these but one can hope)

How easy is linux to use? Ive heard horror storys about it.
- How good is open office?/ the pandoras equivalent?

How fast is the web browser?
-will it be able to play things such as youtube, or flash / java games?
-whats the range on the wireless? (or does this have nothing to do withe pandora and is more to do with the source?)

Is the speaker quality / screen quality good enough to watch movies and listen to music?

When will the first / second batch be shipped?
- The to do list on the openpandora site has two things crossed of, but lists something fairly lowdown as having a latest dead line of 31st?!

Will we ever be able to use something like pay pal to buy it? (im only 17 so i dont really know how secure the other payment methods are, having only ever used paypal)



/donns flame suit for asking retarded questions. Go easy on me please !

 

[renegadechic]

emulators should be fairly easy to install but you are right that they will probably need to be special pandora versions, especially the higher spec ones like psx4pandora and nulldce. if the source is available i expect that some might work in some shape or form with being compiled for ARM but they would be better with optimisation.

the games (as far as i am aware) should work fine as straight up ISOs/ROMs that you would usually use and not be specific versions.

not sure how much dosbox can handle, those might be a bit optimistic though if the source code for them is available they might be able to be compiled

linux on the pandora should be trouble free for the user as the interface they are making is meant to be useable straight out the box. any issues i know anyone here will indulge our questions (i am as big a linux n00b as you i expect)

open office i dont think will work due to java requirement (along with java games) as i dont think theres an ARM version of it. i think theres an ARM version of flash due and also a 3rd party version that makes flash stuff work.

the browser will be pretty quick but obviously it will have its limits. i dont think those limits have been attemptedly pushed yet.

speakers are obvious small and you arent gonna get a thumping bass but in the videos it sounds passable. it'll be better than a gameboy and worse than 5.1 surround is as much as i can tell you. screen is shaaaarp

due times... 1st batch some time in early summer i reckon and 2nd batch, pre-orders would be a month or so after the 1st batch i reckon.

no idea about paypal. possibly once they become more trusted?

 

[lulzfish]

The Pandora can emulate:
PS1
GBA
some arcade cabinets
SNES
The Sega console that came before Dreamcast, I think? The Genesis?

Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and PSP are all "possible", but there's no confirmation of how fast or good they'll be.

Installing emulators should be very easy since these emulators are made specificaly for the Pandora.
The games for emulators will be standard illegal game images, which is why you don't download them. The emulators are for homebrew development and games you already have a legal copy of.

Installing Pandora games, yes, the Pandora uses a very unique architecture. You will need a "Pandora version" of any game you're installing on it.

There is a way to run old DOS games, but I think the emulation ability cuts out around the high-end 486s and Windows 98, since it's a very low-level, inefficient emulation to get from ARM to x86.

Linux is very easy to use these days, and the Pandora will be no exception. The Pandora's default graphics setup is a little odd, it will normally just have one fullscreen window rather than multiple windows, but you can install a different window manager to change this if you want.

OpenOffice is excellent, it's the best office suite for PC.
Unfortunately, it's pretty heavy as far as resources go, and we're planning to use lighter applications like AbiWord for the Pandora. It's basically the same thing, but the graphics might not be as good.. No big deal. It can still read Office documents and do everything.

The web browser's speed depends on your Internet connection.
Flash games are not very likely until Adobe stop being a dick about Flash [Which is kind of a piece of shit anyway]
However, there are a few tricks to watching YouTube without Flash, and I know the Pandora will support at least one of them very easily, if not out of the box.
Java, I don't know. It's entirely possible, but it's so rarely used that I haven't heard anything about it. It's possible you'll just need to install it yourself.

The range of the wireless is probably just the smaller of the Pandora's range and the access point's range, but I would say it's probably just as good as most laptops' range.

The screen is 800 by 480, which is perfect for DVD-quality movies.
The speakers are probably decent, but headphones will be a lot better.

First batch is shipping whenever it's ready, the second batch is probably a matter of weeks or months after that, depending on how much the devs want to wait.

Don't worry about the list. The Pandora will be done when it's done.
Pre-orders for the first batch, however, are basically closed. You should probably just relax, focus on something else, and come back in a couple months to ask about the second batch.

PayPal might be possible in the future, but for now they've cut off OP's account because they were acting suspicious [by taking pre-orders]

I think pandorawiki.org probably has all the information you need, I would advise checking there as well.

edit: Java is pretty well supported by open-source, I think the worst we could have is a recompile of IcedTea or something.
Flash, however, is notorious for being shit and taking forever to move to new platforms. I wouldn't count on an ARM version of Flash being ready for the Pandora's release.

 

[drD20]

All that questions have been answered before.
Please do you and us a favor and search a bit, just a bit.

edith fu... am i slow

 

[clippa]

Please, do us all a favour and remember to refresh before making snide comments.

 

[luke v2]

Thanks for the replys guys .

As for the illegal download games, its mainly for games i already own (such as crashbandicoot or FF7), but downt know how to get onto my pc. I dont think its illegal downloading something i already paid for. (or if it is i dont care, because it shouldnt be)

Will the pandora games will be bought of something like steam? Or are they freeware?

Ill try to doing something to keep myself busy for the next couple of months then. Hopefully ill get one in the second batch .

Cant wait to have one of these. It seems to do everything i use my pc for (games, music, movies) in the palm of my hand, abeit a bit slower, but still!

 

[lulzfish]

Well, the Pandora team doesn't have anything like Steam, but the Pandora games are just regular video games.. They might be free, they might cost money, they might be open-source, they might not be.

Unlike stupid pieces of crap like the iPhone, the Pandora's software is entirely controlled by the user and the developer.

There are absolutely no restrictions on what you can run, as long as it ends up in ARM machine language.

 

[Raz]

This may help you

CODE
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=46508&hl=


Helped me get an understanding of it thnx to the wonderful ppl here willing to write these very big paragraphs

 

[Nik1]

Still debating if I should get the OpenPandora or Nokia n810 WiMAX, would really appreciate any input you guys can give.

 

[gp2.eXe]

Oh you missed a nice video review a while ago. There even was a battle between the two! :lol:

 

[Tom`]

Still debating if I should get the OpenPandora or Nokia n810 WiMAX, would really appreciate any input you guys can give.

IMO there is really no contest here. The N810 has a GPS, a backlit keyboard, a built-in camera, and a transflective LCD screen (looks better in sunlight, probably). On the other hand, the Pandora has a more powerful CPU and GPU, gaming controls, more memory, 2 full-size SDHC slots, 2 usable USB ports (one mini, requiring an adapter, for USB 1.1, and one full-size USB 2.0 port), TV-out, more than twice the battery capacity...

 

[lulzfish]

Still debating if I should get the OpenPandora or Nokia n810 WiMAX, would really appreciate any input you guys can give.

Oh you missed a nice video review a while ago. There even was a battle between the two! :lol:

lol you did miss a good video review. XD

The N810 is probably cheaper, but the Pandora has a number of advantages that I really like:

1. Clamshell design
2. The keyboard looks bigger and easier to use [I say 'looks' because I've never used either of them, technically]
3. Twice as much RAM as the N810
4. Takes two regular SD cards, so although the Pandora only has 0.5 GB built-in flash vs. the N810's 2.25 GB, the Pandora can hold 64GB in regular SD cards to the N810's 32GB in miniSD.
5. Better controls. I don't really care for gaming, but the thumbdiscss look like a much better scrolling method than anything the N810 has.
6. The Pandora has a full-sized USB, so you can plug in any USB 2.0 device without using any special cables. I don't think the N810 has this.
7. Graphics acceleration. I can't find anything on the N810 about this, does it have any sort of graphics processor at all?
8. Larger volume battery, probably lasts longer. Can't really say, as I don't have the N810 battery specs handy.

But it's mostly the clamshell, the larger keyboard, and the SD card slots, since I only have regular full-size SD cards, and I don't want my Linux UMPC to be mistaken for a cell phone or something like that

edit: GPS is a really nice feature on the N810, I didn't notice that. However, I usually know where I am, and it's simple enough to buy a USB GPS dongle for the Pandora once the first-batchers figure out which ones work well.

 

[Hotcooler]

Or you may even use Bluetooth GPS probably.. we'll see when it comes to me

 

[mitosis]

Still debating if I should get the OpenPandora or Nokia n810 WiMAX, would really appreciate any input you guys can give.

Well for one unless you live in one of the few select big cities that actually HAVE wimax, you really wouldnt need the n810 wimax version, its just a waste of money.

I have an n810 and I love it, however there is no comparison between the n810 and the Pandora as far as gaming or power goes... the Pandora will easily be 10x faster for gaming just because of the horrible gpu in the n810 (not ripping on it I carry it everywhere, favorite gadget that I own and has already arrived) and probably 3-4 times faster for web browsing.

I am just guessing on these numbers based off of my own experience with my n810 and the vids Ive seen of our Pandoras in the works... and what theyre showing off in those vids arent even optimized software yet, this thing isnt even out... however I can tell you what I know about the n810.

Gaming on n810 is there but not very great... the hardware REALLY REALLY isnt designed for gaming ESPECIALLY the 4-way dpad thingy (not a dpad because it's this horrible square with only 4 directions and a button in the middle)... it KINDA does up to snes era emulation... in a similar manner to the psp (psp often needs frameskip on 2 or 3 for most games to barely get 30)... except a little worse, especially because of the lack of controls. I personally am into rougelikes so of course the n810 is great for that with the full keyboard and an (almost) fully functional xterm. Then theres scummvm, those games all do ok because you basically just click the touchscreen to do everything, and the one-off office games like solitaire and minesweeper but that's it for gaming on n810... don't get your hopes up for the gaming potential of it, psp does much better for less money.

ANYTHING positive about the n810 as far as gaming goes (open source, full kb for rougelikes, touchscreen for point and click adventures or solitaire etc) also goes for the Pandora... except it'll be better and without any of the negatives. There will be gaming controls, a real gpu, a better case (referring to the clamshell vs slider thing), a nicer keyboard (all tho this is just a good guess... the keyboard on the n810 is a work of art in my opinion so for me to say that I think the Pandora will have a better keyboard is a big complement), the list goes on forever about why the Pandora is better for gaming.

Web browsing on the n810 is for the patient. Not much else to say. If youve tried web on your phone, a psp, nintendo ds, palm pilot, etc then of course it's better than that. The n810 is a superior web device as compared to a lot of stuff that exists TODAY and will fit in your pocket... but this statement is very quickly becoming false. Pros for web on n810 are that, the last time I checked, the n810 was the only pocket device with full flash 9 support... iphone, palms, psps, etc only have flash 7... but I havent checked on that in a while for all I know apple updated their shit. However despite having all this glorious flash 9 at your fingertips youre gonna starve waiting for it to load... youtube, myspace, or any web2.0-heavy site are a no-go... even these boards take patience.

Altho Pandora isnt likely to have complete flash support out of the box, it should come with time eventually to some degree... however in all other aspects of the web Pandora should be ridiculously great... along the lines of a modern low end laptop for performance... closest thing to the full web in your pocket EVER...

Firefox will be the real deal full on Firefox 3.01 or whatever version theyre at now... so that should be AWESOME since you'll be able to use some cool web-speeding-up plugins like flashblock, noscript, and imglikeopera to make it not load flash, run scripts, or load any pictures that you don't specifically want it to. I had my buddy who has to live in internet cave land where you can only get 56k install these three plugins on his computer and he's loving how much faster pages load for him, you really save a lot of bandwidth and processing power by not having to load all that stuff. I just wish the Firefox derived browser on the n810 supported plugins ;.(

As far as the maemo (n810 linux operating system, also ARM) open source community vs Pandora open source community goes... once again theres no comparing at all yet due to the Pandoras unreleased status, but my general feel is that this is a more homey, underground scene like the psp homebrew scene where as the maemo community is sponsored by nokia with their interests in mind. Then theres the obvious fact that the Pandora is primarily a gaming device where as the n810 is like a pda and more office oriented.

If youve got the money of course Im gonna tell you to grab yourself an n810 now cause theyre AWESOME and then get a Pandora from the second batch... but realistically the n810 is very dated and a new version based on the same OMAP chips as the Pandora is due out soon... so if youre one of those guys who will be bummed when you buy an n810 and one month later the n910 comes out dont get it.

If you just want to have a really REALLY nice pda, with mild internet capabilities, a beautiful full kb in slider form (screen gets scratched beware), and get your feet wet in some fun mobile linux then maybe pursue a refurbished n810 off ebay or something.

 

[danielliu88888]

didn't ED say something about glow-in-the-dark keyboard?

 

[Chip]

didn't ED say something about glow-in-the-dark keyboard?
It was considered at one point, but it ended up not being feasible. Perhaps a slightly more expensive glow-in-the-dark keypad could be an aftermarket option.

 

[lulzfish]

He said something, but I have no recollection what it was.

 

[PoisonedV]

He said something, but I have no recollection what it was.

I'm still recoiling from the loss of my poor, beautiful reflective analogue wells

 

[Monk]

Wha...? The glow-in-the-dark paint got cancelled? Although it seemed like it was unlikely to be a BRILLIANT capability, I loved that idea even if you'd have to leave the pandora lying around with the case open to "charge" the keyboiard