Pandora's Design

[Xmas]

Will it have a hole for a wrist strap? What about a Kensington security slot?

Being able to play on a surface is only minimally important.

I'd say being able to set it down on a table is one of the main advantages of the clamshell design.

QUOTE
I know the unit being too "top heavy" is the major concern but it seems to me that with the high capacity battery that the machine is going for most of the weight will be there anyway. If you keep that on the bottom underneath the keyboard (like it is now) then would it be so much of a big deal to have the board on the top underneath the LCD?

Having the battery in a removable part separate from the main PCB is not an option since you'd lose power every time you reconfigure the parts.

QUOTE
The design is a lot like the swivel design, but the plugging/unplugging (although a little crude) seems like it'd be cheaper to implement and more reliable of the long term.

For someone who wants to use the device mostly in tablet mode the connectors would have to withstand a few thousand attach/detach cycles without significant degradation in firmness.

 

[DeadlyDad]

Using PocketIso on your PSX ISOs you can drastically reduce the size of lots of games. I've got about 15 games on two 2GB cards.

For example FFVII cd 1 compresses to 290 MB, but it depends a lot on the game. Tekken3 goes as low as 50Mb, Blast Radius 50 Mb and Chaos Break 36 MB to name a few. I think I have a compressed Ridge Racer thats only 5MB somewhere.

I can see where PocketISO would come in handy. For instance, LINK REMOVED offers the complete PSX set on only 120 DVD's. :blink:

 

[Clad]

FF's and other RPGs could be reduced even further with a format that recompress PSX video format to xvid or something. Pandora could handle that.

 

[Mr B]

PocketISO does nothing for games that doesn't have audio tracks, those that do, get a lot of benefit tho.

Clad's suggestion of re-compressing (or even replacing vids with a single black frame) saves space for pretty much all games with pre-rendered movies, however, it makes it less useful, since the user has to know how to do this, not to mention emulators have to be more advanced as well, just to play it back.
B!

 

[whiskthecat]

I can see where PocketISO would come in handy. For instance, Tiptonware offers the complete PSX set on only 120 DVD's. :blink:


Wow, nice link. Think I will be spending some of my Christmas money. :lol: Not on PSX though, that is crazy expensive.

 

[Alex.]

Regarding the status LEDs on the Pandora: please keep them green, red, or yellow - none of that super-bright blue crap you see on every cookie-cutter laptop smile.gif It seems GPH followed that trend on the new F200s, and a lot of people are bothered by it. Making them slightly dim would also be a good thing, subtlety is better since they'll be in our field of vision for the entire time we'll use the device.

 

[whiskthecat]

Regarding the status LEDs on the Pandora: please keep them green, red, or yellow - none of that super-bright blue crap you see on every cookie-cutter laptop smile.gif It seems GPH followed that trend on the new F200s, and a lot of people are bothered by it. Making them slightly dim would also be a good thing, subtlety is better since they'll be in our field of vision for the entire time we'll use the device.

The lights on the wiimote bother me severely.

 

[Clad]

the user has to know how to do this

I don't think it's much of an issue for this community.

QUOTE
not to mention emulators have to be more advanced as well, just to play it back.


Well, the main issue is having a skilled coder sacrifice enough spare time for this. But the hardware would be powerful enough for sure.

 

[DeadlyDad]

Regarding the status LEDs on the Pandora: please keep them green, red, or yellow - none of that super-bright blue crap you see on every cookie-cutter laptop smile.gif It seems GPH followed that trend on the new F200s, and a lot of people are bothered by it. Making them slightly dim would also be a good thing, subtlety is better since they'll be in our field of vision for the entire time we'll use the device.

The lights on the wiimote bother me severely.

Seeing as how LEDs can be both light emitters and detectors, it shouldn't be difficult to, between pulses, check the ambient light levels and adjust the LED's brightness dynamically, probably by changing the pulsing profile. And it couldn't get much cheaper, either:
QUOTE
Because the circuit changes required to provide this bidirectional communication feature consist of only one additional I/O pin and printed circuit board trace (which can be provided at design time for zero additional hardware cost) we claim that adding this hardware feature to a device is essentially free. Of course, software and CPU runtime are also necessary to make this work.

 

[Turnip]

What happend to it having a part metal case like craig said in the big thread?

Hello?

 

[atomicthumbs]

What happend to it having a part metal case like craig said in the big thread?

Hello?


Nobody wants to talk to you, vandal.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

I personally think the design is interesting. It's not as elegant as the PSP but then again it's a totally different breed of machine. The more I look at it the more it all makes sense. It's boxy design is kinda DS like, and having a static keyboard instead of a fold/slide away one means less to go wrong from snapping cables, and the keyboard is very useful. I wonder if we will be able to code on the machine itself? Coding on the move is a very exciting concept!

The trouble with polls like this is that we don't have it in our hands yet. It may turn out to be one fantastic machine to use or it could be a total flop. I'm waiting until it becomes a reality and yes I will be buying one.

 

[White Demon]

When I opened this thread I immediately voted 'HATE', but after seeing This youtube video with a person showing a mockup design, I'm not so sure anymore.

Has anyone made a mockup design that can be printed out? If so I would love the link to one. I would like to try using a mockup style design like in the youtube video linked above.

I guess my main issue with the unit is that the idea all along seemed to be to build the 'best hombrew game machine ever', but the design for it makes it look like a mini laptop, for which there are other similar units available, eg EEE (the fact it isn't nearly as powerful is irrelevant here).

The perfect design I would have liked to see would have been to have the controls on either side of the screen ala GP2X/PSP, with a slideout keyboard. Now I've been told in another thread this slideout keyboards are expensive to implement (can't see how though), but more importantly, patented, so copyright issues could arise. Fine then, remove the keyboard completely, after all, that's one of (if not the only) reasons that touchscreens were created in the first place isn't it? And really, I can't see anyone typing any slower using a touchscreen keyboard than with the keyboard that will be on this unit, since you'll be having to use your thumbs because its too small to use normally.
*EDIT* please DO NOT respond to this one paragraph above, as I'm just stating what i personally would have liked to see. It's obvious it;s not gonna happen though so I don't wanna argue any more about it. (end edit)

One issue I keep seeing people bring up but no-one has really answered properly though, is about the actual use of the touch screen. When using it, if the hinges aren't strong enough, the screen will want to move back when you press on it. This screen looks like it might not be useable for anything more than light touches to select something from a menu. And even if it does have strong hinges to resist against touching, everythning will wear down with use one day.... how soon that day is can never be assured, even with something that looks sturdy and strong.

But anyway, as I said, on this design.... I'm not so sure if I really hate it now. Those designs on the openpandora.ca page looked hideous when I first saw them, and the first time I changed my mind was when I saw the youtube video. Maybe it's just those renders that make it look bad? Although I have to admit, the white one on that page is starting to grow on me more than the black on. The black keybaord and controls contrasted against the white case actually looks not too bad. But please, keep the corners as despicted on those pictures, as the fully rounded one shown earlier in this thread didn't really appeal to me at all.

So.... maybe I've moved from HATE to DISLIKE in terms of the poll. As stated earlier, if somone has made a design of a mockup that can be printed out I would like a link so I can have a sort-of hands on experience, to test its functionality. Maybe with that I might like it even more.

But even still, this unit ain't gonna win any designs for looks. It still looks butt ugly, despite whether it might be fucntional.

 

[gaterooze]

That's a fantastic video.

 

[J201605]

What happend to it having a part metal case like craig said in the big thread?

Hello?

He never said it would have a metal case the way a zodiac does... he said that the material used to make the case would be plastic with metal mixed in and cited the psp as an example of a device with this type of case.

 

[Lobo]

PocketISO does nothing for games that doesn't have audio tracks, those that do, get a lot of benefit tho.

Clad's suggestion of re-compressing (or even replacing vids with a single black frame) saves space for pretty much all games with pre-rendered movies, however, it makes it less useful, since the user has to know how to do this, not to mention emulators have to be more advanced as well, just to play it back.
B!

Have you actually used PocketISO? That's more or less what it does: it replaces the videos with a couple of seconds of low quality video, which the user can skip by pressing X or Start or whatever. No need for the emu to know anything.

 

[Mr B]

No, but from your question, i went and downloaded it, and hey, what do you know, for known video formats the thing does remove/replace the vid. It only finds 1 vid for the 4'th cd of FF9, for example. To bad thats just it. Games that depend on the vid for making the game tell the player what to do no longer works. Games that don't depend on the vid's just let you experience a degraded gaming experience. Oh, and a lot of games don't let ya skip the vid by any means, most often due to the movie being the only way to get to know what to do... It probably works, but i wouldent use it for reasons aside the function.
B!

 

[fusion_power]

I would like to see an Design like this, thats what I call RETRO!
Here, this is My Pandora in ART DECO:



Yes it looks like it would cost a fortune in real...but I like to dream... ^^

 

[prairiefire]

I would like to see an Design like this, thats what I call RETRO!
Here, this is My Pandora in ART DECO:



Yes it looks like it would cost a fortune in real...but I like to dream... ^^


THAT looks AWESOME!

 

[Perky_Goth]

Now I've been told in another thread this slideout keyboards are expensive to implement (can't see how though), but more importantly, patented, so copyright issues could arise.

Copyright has nothing to do with patents. Stop mixing it up.