Premium Pandora's are annoying and slowing down the PreOrders


Investors! We are the investors and as such the OPT's allegiance is to us. Hell! If there were corporate investors then yes this thing may have existed a year earlier but we, the open people, would not have been invited along for the ride. We'd get a few polite updates every now and again and then all asked to cough up more than Premium Pandora prices. And who's to say the end product would not be subject to a little commercial "closing".


So at the end-of-the-day the Pandora is what it is because of the way it was funded. Perfect!
 
Investors! We are the investors and as such the OPT's allegiance is to us. Hell! If there were corporate investors then yes this thing may have existed a year earlier but we, the open people, would not have been invited along for the ride. We'd get a few polite updates every now and again and then all asked to cough up more than Premium Pandora prices. And who's to say the end product would not be subject to a little commercial "closing".


So at the end-of-the-day the Pandora is what it is because of the way it was funded. Perfect!
I agree but they couldve taken investors. I for instance am not that rich but I would've been happy to stick £5000 down as an investment (not much to a company but if you get 10 people doing that, thats 50k).


It is a perfect product however the community (built up by people) could be better if those that want pandoras had them in their hands right now. More people, more devving happens, more devving happens better the product is. I'm a massive fan of this project yet I placed my order on 31st Jan just gone...and cancelled when refurbs came up. I'm a fan of this project but I'm not a fan of waiting.


The notion that OP is some fairy tale company that didn't want to make a profit is so far removed from reality it's untrue. They wanted to make a profit (rightfully so for their bloody hard work!). And they could've made a profit a lot quicker by leasing shares for a year or two, which would've benefitted the community by having more pandoras in the wild and more people writing games/emulators for the pandora!
 
^


I knew within the first few hours of playing the Pandora that it was a device I needed a 2nd of, just in case PandorA fails. I think I placed an order for two more within a few days of receiving my first unit back in May of last year.
 
My personal "guess" or "belief" as to Opt Ltd motivations and hopes were in an order of precedence. 1st and foremost, make a product with the support of the user community through per-ordering for financing and patience for production, that is basically defined by the community wishes, within reason and with constant updates about adjustment and the willingness to at listen to suggestions of the final design.


Secondarily, once the product was designed debugged and the OS and software more in tune with the mainstream population (non-geek). "Perhaps" the production could be ramped up and some money be made. I do NOT believe this was the major motivation, but not an unreasonable expectation and hope.


I could be wrong and Op Ltd could have been totally profit minded, and non caring about the open, user community, and it's wishes, but I see too many opportunities along the way where they could have just stiffed us all and walked away with a bunch of 'profit'. They didn't, and continue to work hard to keep the project alive.


Think what you want, but I see no evidence that OP Ltd has ever compromised from building a cool device 'with' and 'for' us with profit as a secondary possibility, not a necessity or focus for the project. FYI I always view the world in a very pragmatic / realistic perspective with a skew towards not trusting in peoples 'kindness' for motivation, this project just exudes honesty based on every decision I've seen them make.


Craig tells it like it is, no sugar coating, I like that, he calls em how he sees em based on 'his' perceptive, political correctness be damned.. refreshing attitude. Shut up and deal or screw is always in my mind with people who can't see the big picture, even if I seldom put that in writing as it seems to just feed the trolls and their attempt to paint the project in a negative light.


I and anyone else who was paying attention at the time of ordering, were not lied to or mislead in any way and the promises made were not broken nor compromised, if you weren't of competent intellect to understand the broad strokes of the agreement, you were at fault, not Op Ltd. My 'investment' was limited as far as my return on it to 1 working Pandora, not a 'share' in any future profits. The option to bow out with a refund was ALWAYS available, you chose to exercise that choice or not.


'if i had known I would never have ordered, blah blah'. Hindsight is bullshit and not relevant to any argument about the decisions each 'investor' made. There are no guarantees in life, nor in investments, get over it.


Just sayin


Twiitcher
 
I at least don't want a Pandora 2 too soon. Something this great has to be future-proof; I've upgraded open handhelds (GP2X > Wiz > Pandora) three times in as many years, and I'll be damned if I have to do it again.
I don't really follow this line of logic. A manufacturer doesn't force you to buy a new product by releasing new product. Nor do they somehow stop the progress of technology by choosing to stand still.

This is a GNU/Linux based OS being used. The drivers should either be rolled into the kernel, plugged in with kernel mods, or be the rare user space driver. This in turn yields one of the fundamental strengths of Linux, where when combined with FOSS it is very cross hardware tolerant. So unless you think EvilDragon and the rest involved with the custom distribution would instantly lock you out if there was newer better hardware by maniacally driving the desktop manager RAM usage up I really don't quite follow this.


It seems to me the bigger issue along those lines is the simple reality that this is a very integrated device, and cutting die steel for cases, lining up supply contracts, and otherwise is not free. Honestly I'm very impressed at how a small international team managed to pull together and do a project like this well enough the big issues are with the brick and mortar fabber, who seem to be making a good faith effort to get things sorted out.


Personally I'm in Batch 2, and intend to wait with a potential follow on order in 2012 if everything goes nicely. I've taken a lot of time comparing it to various other devices along these lines, and as is it's very solid.


For eBook/pdf reading you'd need a 7.65" tablet, presuming the normal portrait orientation, to exceed the width of the Pandora in its normal orientation. I'd call that rather good, particularly if things scroll without much fuss. 7" is basically the limit of pocketability for tablets, and I can't see I see that much of a loss until the dual screens hit stride. Movies were acceptable on my old Palm and this is better setup for it.


For general computing the rough equivalent of a high end system before the turn of the century isn't bad by any means and more then adequate for the SQLite rendition of a Handy Shopper like program I intend to setup. It can handle a wide variety of other nice pocket computer functions, which makes the price I paid for it cheap versus the specialized options while being able to do much they cannot. Obviously more RAM and processor power is always nice, but if the concern is emulation oomph I'm pretty sure you'll have to wait a while anyway before designing something meant to have Dolphin or Yababuse ported to it. Given Id kind of stalled after Quake 4 and the idTech engine for Doom 3 will not be released until after Rage, there's not exactly a slew of demanding FPS engines really available that the Pandora can't handle.
 
Back
Top