Release Pandora Now Has 256mb Of Ram And 512mb Internal Nand Storage

[ish420]

Great nice indeed. I just checked my CC account. It hasn't been modified. Hopefully I will not be affected by the change. Although, it may take a little time to reflect any changes in my account.

 

[Svartalf]

please tell me you mean "in 6 months when there are more demanding applications being made/ported and the 256MB is an obvious benefit" and not "in 6 months when we begin shipping pandoras"

Heh... This wouldn't change the delivery dates. The SoC/RAM/NAND is assembled as a complete unit at the last moment and delivered. Changing the RAM profile would be more expensive, but wouldn't add much to the timeline unless you did it days before their delivery.

He's alluding to 6 months from now when the fruits of all of our waiting comes to pass- you had a powerhouse with 128Mb. 256Mb cranks up the power a notch or two over what we had previously. There's quite a bit of a big jump in what you can do with the extra RAM with the Pandora because it was limited in some ways by the 128Mb.

 

[GoblinKing]

Yes, if you get a refund to your credit card, your card will have a credit balance rather than a debit balance. You will not get any interest added or removed whilst you have a credit balance.

However, some banks MAY charge for translating currency, depending on where you are in the world, what your card currency is, and which site you used. If you didn't get charged it for sending the money, you will not be charged for the refund.

Ahhhh, thank god for that, cheers for the quick reply guys.

 

[Mjlink]

Question?

Placed 2 orders through Gbax, two different credit cards ($500 limit on one)
order 1: Pandora
order 2: dev fund, battery, case, tv cable

Can I combine them? & not lose place in rollout line?

Thanks for the upgrade dev team!

 

[Joshwaan2k]

Great News guys Cortex A8 + 256MB Ram = Best Handheld ever

I Paid with my Debit Card so I think I'm safe

 

[sparr]

It will be for the entire first batch i'm sure, you can't seperate the community like that. What happens when that N64 emu relies on 256mb to run smoothly?

I find humor in your choice of console, considering that the N64 had a memory upgrade that some games would not run without.

 

[Wilhood]

what a joke

 

[verm71]

can a credit card have plus money in there??

Yes, I used to do this frequently when I had a small credit card with $500 limit, and wanted to go on a trip. They referred to it as "pre-paying" it and it works just fine. I would pay an extra $200 or $300 into my credit card, effectively bringing up my trip's spending budget to $700 or $800.

 

[Gilrad]

So how will this affect the future batches?

Price increase? Or are you willing to foot the loss in profits as well, by keeping it at the $330 pricepoint?

 

[benjiro]

Lol,

Here i was, wondering if the Wiki page needed updating. Looks like somebody already beat me to it

# 256MB DDR-333 SDRAM
# 512MB NAND FLASH memory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(console)

 

[yosh64]

hey

To all those concerned about currency rates and such, such as the following posts.

I ordered with CC, and I do NOT want my order canceled.

Since the order the Canadian dollar dropped by a lot. If I get canceled I will lose about 50$ just in conversion fees. I will NOT reorder and just accept my losses and use my current ipod touch.

and

If I can offer an opposing viewpoint, one that I'm sure 99% of you will vehemently disagree with... I'm not thrilled about paying even a dollar more than I have already paid for a Pandora. I doubt I will ever make much use of the extra RAM (nothing I plan to do will be substantially aided by it). The device was at the top of my "widget" budget already, so any extra cost tips it into the realm of "not financially sensible" for me.

I sincerely hope that currency fluctations are not too severe, or you might have one extra first batch Pandora to sell to a lucky customer

On the one hand I greatly appreciate you making this change for the first batch. It would have been a slap in the face to early adopters if it was only implemented for the second batch. Kudos for this.

On the other hand, I wish you could wait another month before switching banks, to avoid this malarky. I do understand there are circumstances which you cannot discuss which may be forcing your hand though.

Middo makes an interesting post that those concerned might want to read, I never thought about such things either.

For those worried about currency conversion losses etc., my understanding is that because WE (yes me included having paid with an Australian VISA card) have paid by credit cards the sum of 199 pounds that it doesnt matter what our respective dollar is worth. i.e. craigix will refund the 199 pounds that will convert to a dollar amount (actually higher than originally paid - so you will make a small profit) then as soon as possible, re-order the unit for 199 pounds so you are not out of pocket (appart from any fees that you credit card/bank may charge) The credit card percentage for both transactions will be charged to Craigix via their merchant services.

Please someone correct me if I am wrong above.

So in the end ya currency rate might not be an issue , and remember cragix stated the following earlier in the thread.

I know the exchange rates are a mess at the moment, but we will try to make it whatever you paid last time you will pay this time and any slight mismatch we hope will be made up by the fact you have 256MB + 512MB (and that's coming out of our pocket).

256MB is just too good NOT to put in the Pandora. If anyone isn't happy about this and wants to cancel their order that is of course no problem, we understand.

I'll probably write up a more detailed newsletter for this soon. Sorry for the last minute change - but we think in 6 months you will be very very pleased we did it.

I hope this resolves some of your concerns about such things.

edit
GunPei2X, I'm quite sure you will probably end up using the extra RAM at some time or another, even if you don't know it. As has been said earlier, Linux was mentioned to run faster on 256MB of RAM or something because it makes better use of it or something, I don't know to much about this though. But yea, if you surf the web then you might open more pages/tabs or open more programs without the use of any memory swapping or whatever, or maybe you will play a certain game or application that uses it one day. But yea, although I can't say for sure, I think there is a moderate to high chance that the extra memory will be made use of without you even knowing .

another edit
I just ran into some interesting comments from this Linux check memory usage page.

QUOTE

Michael Says:
December 6th, 2007 at 4:00 pm

Using the command free, vmstat, top all shows it uses almost 100% of the memory. But if I use the system monitor, it will show only less than 10%.

I am using CentOS 5. can anyone explain why the free, vmstat, top all displaying wrong information? Thanks.



and in response...

QUOTE

Atahan Says:
February 1st, 2008 at 7:30 am

Actualy memory is not used by application, but it is used for disk caching.
If memory is not fully utilized by kernel than it is wasted, by keeping data in cache when an application needs data again it can be provided faster.
If you want to see the memory from the perspective of application you should look at +- buffers/cache line, the free column of this line shows you the memory that can be used for applications.

In the case below my application using 2GB of memory.

# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 7973 7323 650 0 128 5152
-/+ buffers/cache: 2042 5931
Swap: 8189 40 8149



So yea, this should explain why Linux runs faster with extra RAM , so I thinks anyhows.

cyas

 

[Wolfspirit]

This sounds really cool, but is there any word on how this will delay the first batch? Adding in more memory and NAND flash plus dealing with all of the re-orders, and not to mention the time it was going to take to get everything into manufacturing anyways seems almost too tight of a crunch to meet the original deadline. I don't want to be Mr. Pessimist but it seems very rocky to me at this point. I'm still hanging in there though because I think the Pandora is going to be awesome and I've owned the gp32 and gp2x in the past. I think a little reassurance that all of this won't delay shipping though might be good. Plus, when you say it might be a little more for the 256 and nand flash with exchange rates, do you know roughly how much? Thanks and hope you (Craigx) and team the best in getting this resolved.

 

[TJSomething]

I wish I got a refund. Since I ordered, the pound has gone down about .36 USD. That would mean that after int'l fees, I would save 20 USD. I don't think I will since I paid with a debit card.

 

[bigtruck]

This sounds really cool, but is there any word on how this will delay the first batch? Adding in more memory and NAND flash plus dealing with all of the re-orders, and not to mention the time it was going to take to get everything into manufacturing anyways seems almost too tight of a crunch to meet the original deadline. I don't want to be Mr. Pessimist but it seems very rocky to me at this point. I'm still hanging in there though because I think the Pandora is going to be awesome and I've owned the gp32 and gp2x in the past. I think a little reassurance that all of this won't delay shipping though might be good. Plus, when you say it might be a little more for the 256 and nand flash with exchange rates, do you know roughly how much? Thanks and hope you (Craigx) and team the best in getting this resolved.

This has been answered before, but it's understandable not reading through the dozens of pages of posts about the issue that were made today. This change will almost certainly not cause any delay, the displays are what's taking the longest. Right now they only have about 640 of them. Also the price will be the same, the Pandora team is covering the increased cost out of their own pocket. There will be something more official about reordering (e.g. a blog post or newsletter) soon.

 

[fade]

Great News guys Cortex A8 + 256MB Ram = Best Handheld ever

I Paid with my Debit Card so I think I'm safe

I also ordered via a debit card, can anyone confirm if these kinda payments are safe? And, for the record, I think the new changes are awesome!

 

[javaJake]

Wait, if you're making no money on the first batch, how will you be able to make a bigger second batch (as demand increases)?

Well, you see, that's where "loyal fan" donations come in to play...

However, some banks MAY charge for translating currency, depending on where you are in the world, what your card currency is, and which site you used. If you didn't get charged it for sending the money, you will not be charged for the refund.
Dadgum. I'm gonna get charged both ways, I'll bet, then. What I've spent on the Pandora alone will soon be totaling around $440 (already had it canceled and re-ordered due to security checks on their end). Hmmm.

Guess it's a good thing I kept a "buffer" for unfortunate events in my Pandora budget.

 

[gaterooze]

yosh64: you're probably right that the RAM will be useful in ways that may be imperceptible. And I do hope Middo is correct on the refund process. A few bucks difference I could handle, but the ~$40 it would be otherwise is just too much for me right now (even though it would likely still be worth it in the end).

 

[sold]

Just wondering, why isn't it possible to switch banks AFTER the first batch is shipped? Everyone has paid, so what is the immediate problem?

 

[WizardStan]

Just wondering, why isn't it possible to switch banks AFTER the first batch is shipped? Everyone has paid, so what is the immediate problem?

Just guessing, but I would assume it's because everyone has not "paid" so to speak.
Oh, they've told their credit card company to send the money, and GBAX has told their bank to receive the money, but here's where it breaks down. My guess is their bank looked at the total amount of money coming in via credit cards, said "WTF?! So much monies!" and started refusing to accept the payments. Our credit cards still show it as payment sent, and you better believe they'll charge you interest on it, but until the other end accepts, the money is sitting in limbo.
On the one hand, it sucks. You would think that a bank would be eager to get money in. More money in means more money to lend out means more interest to make.
On the other hand, it is a major risk for them. Imagine if people start calling their credit card companies, calling fraud. That's over a million USD that would need to be accounted for in almost 4000 separate transactions. A security and logistics nightmare for a small to medium sized bank. Some of the larger banks might even balk at such numbers the first time a client brings them in? How are they to know that Craig isn't planning to pocket the cash and fly to Cuba? At which point the bank would be responsible for refunding the full amount to the credit cards, which would forward it back to us.
Sucks, yes, but I can at least understand it.

 

[jbr]

I'm extremely confused. I show up one day and everyone's talking about a RAM upgrade that was said to be impossible only a few weeks ago.

As far as I understand:
-Although some people have to be refunded and then reorder, this will not change the actual cost (based on whatever the base currency for the conversions is)
-The displays are delaying the process much more than this will, so it's worth doing this in the mean time.

Is this correct? Has there been any word as to when the expect them to ship, taking into account the display delays? How much later than Nov. 30th should I plan for? (I have to make sure I'll be in town and such.)