Pandora Questions And Answers

[Chip]

Have a question about the Pandora? Here's what you do:

First check the FAQ. Most common questions are answered there.

Next search the forums.

If you can't find an answer in the FAQ or the forums, then post your question here.



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I had to take over first post to merge threads. As this is a Q&A thread now, I've deleted the unnecessary posts.
Original post by cloud858rk:

Where is the mic located?

Maybe if it was either above the face buttons or above the d-pad, you could use it as a Skype phone? A speaker by your ear and a mic by your mouth. :lol:

 

[Trip]

Hopefully it will be as far away from the speakers as possible to reduce the echo effect that you sometimes get from Teamspeak etc..
I'll probably end up using a Bluetooth headset anyway, but it would be nice to have it work well on the get go

 

[Tudd Fudders]

I'm really interest in buying a Pandora but i have a few questions.

Is there a laptop for about 400$ that could...

Play more emulators (N64 specifically) and have better performance.

Do more applications at a good speed.

Play low end games like half life 1, I wanna be the guy, and maybe too Halo 1?

Be quite portable.

What i'm really trying to say is, Is there a laptop that can all around do more than the Pandora? :huh:

 

[Prosthetic_Mind]

It depends on what you want to do- if you watch ebay for long enough you are sure to eventually pick up an old Pentium 4 laptop which meets your price requirements and will run windows and all the games windows runs, but it certainly won't be a portable and it will be much more fragile then the Pandora.

As it has been stated, the Pandora will probably not be able to run 486 and above compatible programs, meaning that you probably won't get half-life, but there will be plenty of other options when it comes to emulation, and with playstation emulation and probably N64 emulation you'll have many more options than the GP2X.

It comes down to you- do you want something that you can carry in your pocket that is convenient to take everywhere you go or do you want something that is fragile, has limited battery life, and is much more bulky, but has more power and runs windows?

 

[Tudd Fudders]

It depends on what you want to do- if you watch ebay for long enough you are sure to eventually pick up an old Pentium 4 laptop which meets your price requirements and will run windows and all the games windows runs, but it certainly won't be a portable and it will be much more fragile then the Pandora.

As it has been stated, the Pandora will probably not be able to run 486 and above compatible programs, meaning that you probably won't get half-life, but there will be plenty of other options when it comes to emulation, and with playstation emulation and probably N64 emulation you'll have many more options than the GP2X.

It comes down to you- do you want something that you can carry in your pocket that is convenient to take everywhere you go or do you want something that is fragile, has limited battery life, and is much more bulky, but has more power and runs windows?

How about one of those Asus Eee 1000? or a Acer? Will those out perform generally? I don't care if it fits my pockets, just want it to fit into my backpack.

 

[gruso]

You could get a new netbook in Pandora's price range (EeePC etc). As small as they are, they've still got nothing on Pandora's portability. And no gaming controls built in, and probably not very good performance.

You could get a second hand standard-sized latop (15" screen). This would allow you to play your desired games, but has no gaming controls, and is less portable again than a netbook.

For products in Pandora's "portability" class, you'll be looking at UMPCs such as the WiBrain which run Windows. These are very expensive compared to Pandora though. And they still don't have gaming controls.

End of story, if you want price, small size, and dedicated gaming controls, Pandora is it. But if you want to run Windows games, it's not what you want.

[edit] Regarding emulation: Pandora already has PSX running at full speed, and then some. (And then some more). We don't know how N64 will go yet. I can't see a netbook handling those all that well though.

 

[conso]

It really depends on what you want: if you want a laptop, get a laptop. If you want a powerful gadget. get the pandora.

For a good and cheap laptop, I can only recommend to get a hp nc8000 with an additional accumulator for the multi-bay. I have one and with my openSUSE + KDE4-Faktory-Install, it hast more the 7 hours of battery life (under workload). With Ubuntu, it has only 5 hours, but that is still a lot.

 

[gaterooze]

Get a laptop. The advantages Pandora has are the incredibly small size, much longer battery life, and built-in gaming controls -- but for everything else you state you want (playing Halo), you will be much better served with a laptop.

 

[Tudd Fudders]

I have a 360 wired controller so I'm not concern about controls. since that seems to be the biggest difference I guess a laptop would be a go.

 

[icurafu]

EeePC should perform better than the Pandora, at over a KG!

Halo will be just playable at 640x480 on the lowest settings for the start, but it'll get jerky once you get to the mountains.

Plus, you'll need to plug a mouse in. (edit: you have controls sorted, oops)

 

[TrevorBradley]

Hopefully it will be as far away from the speakers as possible to reduce the echo effect that you sometimes get from Teamspeak etc..
I'll probably end up using a Bluetooth headset anyway, but it would be nice to have it work well on the get go

Your open source alternative to TeamSpeak is likely Mumble/Murmur. Likely a lot of work to convert to the Pandora though...

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mumble/

 

[WizardStan]

Hopefully it will be as far away from the speakers as possible to reduce the echo effect that you sometimes get from Teamspeak etc..
I'll probably end up using a Bluetooth headset anyway, but it would be nice to have it work well on the get go

A bit off topic, but almost every echo effect I've encountered (be it Teamspeak, or any other voice chat program) was simply a sound card problem: the mixer was actually recording the the output it was producing in a declining feedback. If you're getting feedback, try a cheap pair of headphones: if the echo disappears, your mic is too sensitive for the speaker setup; otherwise it's a driver setup issue like I mentioned. Bring up the mixer and under the "record" settings, disable everything but microphone.

 

[MWeston]

The microphone is up in the right hinge hump in between the 9 and 0 buttons. It can be used with the lid open or closed since it has the hole facing up and slightly in toward the user (somewhat like the power LED).

 

[ish420]

If you must go with a good inexpensive Netbook, you could try Acer Aspire ONE. XP version w/ 160GB HDD, 6 cell battery will go for $400. It plays HL on steam client, runs GTA3, and runs Emulators ei. N64 fairly well. Even runs F.E.A.R., which I think is amazing. If it runs that, I'm sure there is an endless supply of games it will play. I want to get one and a Pandora. I can take it school and to work. I love these gadgets.
P.S. On Pandora, 480P videos and games will look amazing, correct?

 

[donny662]

Keyboard and mouse is a much better control setup for 3d FPS anyway. The "dedicated" gaming controls are better for the classic 2d (some 3d) games. Even though the Pandora can do the keyboard and mouse controls, the PC games that you would want to run won't work on the Pandora, and I doubt the screen will be large enough to really enjoy playing a FPS with the keyboard and mouse because you need to set the unit on a desk to get the best control.

 

[PoisonedV]

nobody can make personal decisions for you. the information everyone else has been saying is already available elsewhere.

 

[nubie]

I'm really interest in buying a Pandora but i have a few questions.

Is there a laptop for about 400$ that could...

Play more emulators (N64 specifically) and have better performance.

Do more applications at a good speed.

Play low end games like half life 1, I wanna be the guy, and maybe too Halo 1?

Be quite portable.

What i'm really trying to say is, Is there a laptop that can all around do more than the Pandora? :huh:

Yes, EeePC, even the Surf models. You can put 2GB of ram and XP on just about all of them, and with a extended battery it can get 4-5 hours of life on a charge. It has an SD slot and 16GB of SD is only $40.

You could get a new netbook in Pandora's price range (EeePC etc). As small as they are, they've still got nothing on Pandora's portability. And no gaming controls built in, and probably not very good performance.

You could get a second hand standard-sized latop (15" screen). This would allow you to play your desired games, but has no gaming controls, and is less portable again than a netbook.

For products in Pandora's "portability" class, you'll be looking at UMPCs such as the WiBrain which run Windows. These are very expensive compared to Pandora though. And they still don't have gaming controls.

End of story, if you want price, small size, and dedicated gaming controls, Pandora is it. But if you want to run Windows games, it's not what you want.

[edit] Regarding emulation: Pandora already has PSX running at full speed, and then some. (And then some more). We don't know how N64 will go yet. I can't see a netbook handling those all that well though.

I don't know, I agree on principle, but I think that the EeePC has plenty of performance, especially the Pentium M based versions, not the Atom versions. Should be plenty to emulate N64 and PSX, and play Halo just fine.

EeePC should perform better than the Pandora, at over a KG!

Halo will be just playable at 640x480 on the lowest settings for the start, but it'll get jerky once you get to the mountains.

Plus, you'll need to plug a mouse in. (edit: you have controls sorted, oops)

Halo? The EeePC has better specs than the Xbox, the Halo "ground zero", the only difference probably being graphics hardware, lack of Pure Hardware T&L and/or Shader support. Stock it is clocked ~100mhz slower, but the chip is rated ~100mhz faster and you can usually clock it back up.

I have seen FEAR played on an VAIO UX, and there are fanatics playing DOOM3 on Voodoo2 hardware. I think the EeePC has plenty of power. On the flip side bloated PC emulators need a 2.6Ghz+ processor in many cases (DS emulator, n64 on GoldenEye), whereas Pandora emus will be highly optimized.

The Graphics acceleration on the EeePC is not blistering, but it is usable, the Pandora should have more 3D graphics processing power, and a separate DSP will help with H.264 decoding for moving pictures.

It all boils down to whether you want something the size of a VHS tape or the size of a DS Original. And whether or not you Need x86 compatibility and Windows XP.

The Pandora is going to ship with a battery that holds roughly twice as much power as the EeePC Surf battery, and it will use less than half the power, you do the math, the battery should last about 4 times as long.

 

[gruso]

Granted, I probably shouldn't judge all EeePC's on my old man's original 701 model.

 

[bustaballs]

For what you want, a laptop is probably best.

 

[polooo2]

well if you wanna play psx games while riding a mass transit, pandora is the answer...