Openpandorasales@gmail.com

[P90Puma]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: openpandorasales <openpandorasales@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 12:55 AM
Subject: Re: Request to position in Production Queue: Order [Order number removed]
To: xxxxxx@gmail.com


Hi XXXXXX,

Your approximate queue position is 1450 - 1550.  Your order is due to be despatched within the next 2 weeks and you will receive a confirmation of shipping email on the day your order is despatched.

Many thanks for your continued support over the last 2+ years.

Jacquelyn


----------


So is this where I jump off the ship?

EDIT: Just to make it clear, received nothing beyond this date in ANY form of communication, let alone the device that I paid in full for, what almost 3 years ago now?

 

[Iorgy77]

Your Pandora went to a premium customer, dont feel too bad they are like some kinda heroes wearing silver plated armour and riding in on their white stalions. Also they deserve it more than you do.

If you cancel that means that OP get to sell it for more profit. So you become a bit special too.

 

[DaMummy]

now craig knows what your order number is....good job!

 

[WhiteFalcon]

Don't worry, last time I asked I was between 1100-1200 and not a word since then except that many people ordered more than one pandora, up to 10.

[sarcasm]
Look at the bright side, you lent OP money for 2 years so that they can now sell your pandora to someone who comes and gives them more.

Now the best thing to do would probably be to cancel so that they can sell another one for more and you get the warm feeling that your money did some good and now you can spend it again on something else.
[/sarcasm]

 

[P90Puma]

now craig knows what your order number is....good job!

I XX'd out the last 2 digits, though it shouldn't be difficult to find out who I am considering they have my info.

 

[Wolfsclaw]

Before you cancel: Consider than WHEN you receive your pandora (in about 6 months maybe), you can still sell it for probably more than you bought it for! Probably better waiting and then getting some profit out of it than craig having the joy of having one more premium unit to ship than having craig run into money problems because he's having to refund you!

 

[Esn]

Man, that's not good... I guess you tried emailing them back and asking?

If you want an answer from Craig directly, try the "Ask Craig" section on the Craig-controlled forums, because he is boycotting this place.

All I can say is that it's worth it when it does arrive. And after it does arrive, you never have to even think about Craig again if you don't want to. (well, unless your unit breaks down - then just remember the rule: don't make your order number public )

 

[chame]

I only can say I will only get married with my wife, not with some kind of neverending waiting project to get a 3+ years old piece of hardware full of building faults

if I were still waiting, I would cancel and buy another damm thing

life is short!

 

[andmaz]

I only can say I will only get married with my wife, not with some kind of neverending waiting project to get a 3+ years old piece of hardware full of building faults

if I were still waiting, I would cancel and buy another damm thing

life is short!
[/quote

Life is too short and if you cannot get this thing then it matters not how good it is or how bad the build may or may not be.

I never signed up for a high quality professional finished device - all it needs to do is be the best at emulation and control (good dpad)- then again December 2008 was the shipping date so expectation now is higher due to the time that has passed.

Worth the wait? well I could get run over by a bus tomorrow and never get to see one in the flesh despite a 32 month wait.

Even worse I could get one next week and then have to RMA it (it would have to be bad though).

Please can people stop saying its worth the wait - I have never waited this long for anything in my life and to be fair its a portable gaming device - if it changes anyones life then they really are doing something wrong!!!!!!!

Nothing that does not save lives is worth a 32 month wait period - but after waiting so long there is no point in cancelling and after all the preordering was to support the project no matter what!

Rant over for now!!!!!

 

[Popcorn Dave]

Sigh. So I guess that increase in production speed never actually happened, what a shocker.

 

[andmaz]

The board company CC are the weak link here but recently OPT have run out of LCD cables so there is a slight delay.

If CC had produced more boards then the LCD cables issue would have halted production earlier - therefore I very much doubt that I would have received my Pandora by now regardless of what CC did - not unless the LCD cable issue could have been avoided.

 

[aq21]

The board company CC are the weak link here but recently OPT have run out of LCD cables so there is a slight delay.

If CC had produced more boards then the LCD cables issue would have halted production earlier - therefore I very much doubt that I would have received my Pandora by now regardless of what CC did - not unless the LCD cable issue could have been avoided.

For years the Chinese plastic factory was blamed, using xenophobic rhetorics. Suddenly the Chinese deliver, and OPT is not ready. Then after a few months of (faulty) Pandoras slowly drifting onto the hands of long waiting customers, there is a new scheme for delivering immediately to new customers, while customers who paid 32 months ago still wait. We are told that this scheme will actually make delivering faster. I am sure nobody believed that. And indeed it was a lie.

Now, LCD cables. We actually had official news about the LCD cables, only six weeks ago: New LCD Cables finished too early (2010 - 03 - 18) . I guess even OPT does not believe OPT's lies anymore.

 

[Fishbong]

For years the Chinese plastic factory was blamed, using xenophobic rhetorics

Hm, i must have missed those xenophobic rhetorics, care to post any examples?

 

[palmertech]

OP was always fair about that, but certain individual members seemed to have no problems with calling out entire races. The worst I ever saw from the OP team were statements like "Well, that is just standard Chinese business practice", which is perfectly true.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, Craig was out of LCD cables for 3 days, so that didn't really cause any delays.
I tried to be fast with soldering and shipping here

I know Craig still has about 400 boards to test and build left right now. The whole Pandora is just very time consuming.
If I build units at night, I can finish about 15 - 20 in five hours, thanks to a lot of manual labour and testing...

We are working on it and Batch 2 has a few layout changes that should help reducing the building time, but until then, it takes some time, sadly.

Anyone making fun of the Premium units and the MASSIVE money we make from it... well, if it wouldn't be necessary, we wouldn't do it.
And yeah, we're really making money with the Pandora. We're rich. Absolutely.

To be honest, I've never had a worse paid job.
It's been 2 years of daily work of about 5 - 8 hours for me, and so far, I made the massive amount of about -100.000 EUR of money!
That's incredible!

 

[XxionxX]

Don't worry ED, when I get mine I will single handedly sell at least 100 more. I will give demos to EVERYONE! I may not be able to go premium, but I will be able to send more business your way. Now which way to the local Linux convention...

 

[fusion_power]

Well, Craig was out of LCD cables for 3 days, so that didn't really cause any delays.
I tried to be fast with soldering and shipping here

I know Craig still has about 400 boards to test and build left right now. The whole Pandora is just very time consuming.
If I build units at night, I can finish about 15 - 20 in five hours, thanks to a lot of manual labour and testing...

We are working on it and Batch 2 has a few layout changes that should help reducing the building time, but until then, it takes some time, sadly.

Somehow it seems to take longer and longer to build one Pandora. :unsure: I thought Craig hired people extra to speed up this, thats the reason why Premium Pandoras exist. I hope you can speed up things like it was planed in the past. I can remember the old plans from the past how many weeks or so it would takt to build all Pandoras - long time ago it is indeed.
I guess the QC that starts already within CC takes so long, I wonder if this is caused by desin or caused by low QC from the Parts-manufacturers (defect WiFi chips I 've read here somewhere)

Because time is money, all I can recommend is to realy optimise the production process. This and a good QC is the key to make profit with the Pandora - the only way I see yet.

 

[chame]

a project like this is not easy. even big companies have really big losses with hardware equipment, and they just make money because they manufacture big quantities and mix that selling sotfware and other services.
the big problem is not the prototyping (michael had a working one in the matter of months, OMAP technology simplifies everything a lot AND michael is a genious...)

in this kind of project we have many time and money consuming tasks and events:

- providers fail (in schedule, in quantity, in quality)
- provide support (as failing units)

So in a project like this we have:

- High rate of hardware failure (case, LCD cables, ...)
- High rate of resources failure, there were problems from the case (remember the old days? XDD), LCD cable, nubs, mobo quantities...
- Low net income per unit. Actually I doubt there is any with 300 eur price per unit.

So to be a sustainable development, and given that we do not have any other way to get money, rely just in selling massive amounts of units.

Project started with a mortage and other credits which produce interests that need to be paid.

The situation now is: more than two years of paying credits interests, builders, all kind of bills, patents, shipping costs, replacement parts, shipping...
and we have an unknown number of units sold, and barely 1k sent to customers.

What we dont know is the actual number of customers. Many people are quiting, and asking about their money. If we have anyone who joint recently and he knows his position, we could stablish the aproximate real number of pandas sold. I suspect today is much lower than 4k (first batch).

For me its clear that panda project has really horrible financial numbers. all the premium thing is just a desperate try to get liquidity (ebay pandas were been sold by 500eur unit and OPT dont want to lose that oportunity). nothing related with speedup anything, for sure

And in the meanwhile, panda technology is becoming old. New OMAP chips include nice features like digital video out and faster CPUs. for me, the panda design is too expensive the way it is. sony for example needed to cut hardware features in later ps versions, and its the BIG SONY!!. just to mention something, battery is insanelly big (and expensive) and the 3D hardware is barely used in the ports (after all it is to much to fight with OPENGL EE -> OPENGL). the internal 500MB NAND is not needed in my opinion. I just point out some thoughts

I just say that OPT should do something NOW, or the project will become something like DMC and Delorean...

 

[Schnatterplatsch]

And in the meanwhile, panda technology is becoming old. New OMAP chips include nice features like digital video out and faster CPUs. for me, the panda design is too expensive the way it is. sony for example needed to cut hardware features in later ps versions, and its the BIG SONY!!. just to mention something, battery is insanelly big (and expensive) and the 3D hardware is barely used in the ports (after all it is to much to fight with OPENGL EE -> OPENGL). the internal 500MB NAND is not needed in my opinion. I just point out some thoughts

I just say that OPT should do something NOW, or the project will become something like DMC and Delorean...

Heck?
Battery? It's "insanelly" great.

"3D hardware is barely used in the ports", but I doubt that Mupen and PCSXReARMed would run without it. Or am I mistaken?

"the internal 500MB NAND is not needed in my opinion", so you want to deliver the pandora without an OS or force the user to install his own OS and block one SD Card slot all the time? Btw. I'd love to have 1GB - nice for devtools on it.

 

[chame]

Heck?
Battery? It's "insanelly" great. -> yeah, and insanely costly. from my experience it last more than 24 hours of continous gaming, totally unnecessary

"3D hardware is barely used in the ports", but I doubt that Mupen and PCSXReARMed would run without it. Or am I mistaken? -> those and quake ports. thats it. the rest 99% of appz do not use any 3D. I also want a car like this, but there are limits like price and usability that prevent those things to come up

"the internal 500MB NAND is not needed in my opinion", so you want to deliver the pandora without an OS or force the user to install his own OS and block one SD Card slot all the time? Btw. I'd love to have 1GB - nice for devtools on it. -> just boot from SD. a SD is mandatory for any panda user. I do not know any panda user without external SD, so whats the difference? panda has only few MB free anyway...