'stuff' Arriving In Uk 22Nd March

[Creature XL]

Right. So despite the fact that I've had a lot of project management experience I'm quite certain that since it has nothing to do with some sort of "amazing invention" you'll just pass it off like any other comment.

I have no experience in project managment (although i might have heard more of it at university then OP has ), so let me ask a question.
Isn't the base of time estimation past experience? These guys are doing for the first time, so they can't have any experience to build estimates on. How would YOU handle that "problem"?

The above is a serious question for me and is not meant to piss oyu off or something.


@topic: I want to know what happened to the 1000-first-plan, as others have asked already.

 

[Sphinxter]

The whole team is tired of these posts by armchair project managers.

If you want to lecture us in making a handheld please put your cards on the table and let us know of your own amazing inventions which you have brought to market before getting all high and mighty here.

You might also want to consider some of the consoles which never made it to market even with TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS of investment, yet here we are managing on a tiny budget with no debts.

Believe me I feel your pain and I don't mean to nag, just saying maybe if you would let people know what to expect on a regular basis and keep it posted maybe they won't form a lot of unreasonable expectations. A nice Gantt chart perhaps would illustrate the lack of resources and just how miraculous all this really is. In the end you control the flow of information, how you do it can make a world of difference.

Project: Smart Cart http://fullsack.com/cart
Budget: 4.2 million USD
Delivery: 8 months overdue after several delays of the case manufacture in China.

 

[Locri]

Right. So despite the fact that I've had a lot of project management experience I'm quite certain that since it has nothing to do with some sort of "amazing invention" you'll just pass it off like any other comment.

I have no experience in project managment (although i might have heard more of it at university then OP has ), so let me ask a question.
Isn't the base of time estimation past experience? These guys are doing for the first time, so they can't have any experience to build estimates on. How would YOU handle that "problem"?

The above is a serious question for me and is not meant to piss oyu off or something.

That's an entirely valid question, you are definitely not pissing me off

I do agree that it is a past experience thing to a certain extent, but that's where research is handy. I'm not sure about everyone else, but when I'm trying to do something new I tend to research the heck out of it, especially if it's a large project.

In this case I probably would have broken my research into several different sections (PCB manufacturing, case manufacturing, legal requirements, etc etc). On top of research if you can find people that have had experience in these things before it helps too. I noticed several posts in the past where all the OPT had to do was ask the forum about a certain topic and a flood of good responses from experienced people came out. The members of the forum are an excellent resource that I would not waste in any way. Particularly when the OPT has such a rabid fanbase

As I said in a previous post, I understand that even with all the planning in the world mistakes will be made and delays will happen. The key thing is to learn from those mistakes early on and try not to let them bite you again as the project moves forward. I think in this instance the case is the most prevalent example. There seemed to be communications issues right away with the case, they should have gotten Faith or someone like him in to help out far earlier to resolve communications issues.

Mind you, this is all hindsight, but I'd like to think that I would have noticed these problems in a similar situation. And of course, I don't have all of the information about everything that's been happening behind the scenes so I can only base what I'm saying off of what has been on the forums so far.

Oh, and I too want to know what happened to the "1000 cases first" thing. Considering that there are 1000 boards already done and (hopefully) being shipped towards the UK now, it seems like a good idea. They could be holding off so they can do all of the first batch at once, though, because it is probably unlikely that they'd be able to get everyone involved in the assembly together right away and yet have them all stay in the UK while waiting for the rest of the pieces to get there.

 

[senorgomez]

I would suggest that the OP team ignore the armchairs, just don't read the thread I guess. There will always be armchair experts.

 

[mali]

When you post some new detail on the project status, don't just bury it in some forum thread. Put it in a new post or better yet, have a "OpenPandora Project Updates" thread that the entire team (and the team only) can post to. Discussions can happen off that thread, but new information could start there. That way we don't have to dig through an entire forum just to find out what the latest thing is that's going on.

That's the reason I started the quotes thread A dedicated project updates thread would be even better of course, but the quotes thread is doing well, I think.

 

[darkborn]

The project ... makes me happy and confident that the little machine I bought will be arriving ... crafted with love and care.

:wub: :wub: :wub: :wub:
How nice!
What do we need more? Imho, this is the right attitude.
Panda is The New Paradigm, nasty prickle for whole old fashion, closed-proprietary industry.
Finally, it will be possible to get homebrew games (and not just games). Developers will not have to extra pay for dev-kits, licensees and so on.
No Wintell, Sony, Nintendo, whatever bullsh*s.
And remember, laptop in your pocket! And literary, thousands of retro games! And more...

So, we need to be patient for just a ...few months more (kidding). No, for real:
This is first time happened in history, let's wait for a while more.
We're almost there, it is normal to be nervous near to the goal! PEACE. B)

 

[WizardStan]

I don't know the details and frankly couldn't care less, I have nothing invested in your project.

You say you couldn't care less, but veiled insults like

Maybe if you try actually doing the job to hold up your end of it and notify the rest of the team when you're going to fail

and

maybe your project manager in question has some good reason to doubt your ability to deliver in a timely fashion

when you admit you know no details doesn't really lead me to believe that you have no interest at all. You took the time to attack me directly instead of just addressing the problems you had with my post, so you must care at least a little.

 

[Locri]

That's the reason I started the quotes thread A dedicated project updates thread would be even better of course, but the quotes thread is doing well, I think.

Yes, and it does do a nice job at that.

 

[TaG]

Who really knows - what I do know though is that it should have always been done here. It makes so much more sense and gives us so much more control.

The whole team is looking forward to this now.

One of Craig's most promising posts. I know there is always scepticism and criticism of his posts but I thi nk this is genuine and promising for future batches too.

I'm too lazy to search for quotes right now

Lazy sod! You're slacking!

Nonsense, etc...

The whole team is tired of these posts by armchair project managers...yet here we are managing on a tiny budget with no debts.

The real bottom line of this project is that it hasn't been run perfectly; it hasn't been funded perfectly; they had no real experience; but they needed to get enough people on line to fund an amazing project. Where else would you get this awesome hardware for such a price? Locri Epizephyrii may have plenty of valid points, many that I would often agree with or quote, but the reality is that this project has not alsways had the ability to run like a full commercial project and it is really difficult keeping so many different customers on a forum happy.Say nothing and people moan. Say something and people over analyze. Just view this last two years as part of the entertainment, provided at no extra costs.

 

[hobbyman II]

yeah! we all know other firms don't let release dates slip

Asus are a big company that make millions of motherboards and netbooks, and have a huge, well funded research department, this allows them to be really punctual

although small low budget companies might have a delivery date slip a bit

but they all manage to release those longed for items eventually

since all such companies are run by such trustworthy and reliable people

now I just need to plug in my 105 key Oled keyboard and I can finish this post ......

 

[Monk]

I'm just amused that Craig is bitching that people are treating him... like he treats GPH. Except when it's aimed at OpenPandora, it's not fair. When it's Craig aiming at GPH, it's fair :lol:


For example,

The fact FPS figures are not being given is starting to worry me and customers, this thing has no 2D acceleration right? Is that an issue? SDL is 100% software on this? Give us distributors some more facts!

Funny, but I think this is similar to how half the Pandora followers are feeling!

FPS were some of the first things we posted (and we continue to post performance stats), but GPH are taking orders for the WIZ now, ie money, so these answers are needed now.

Yeah - once money is being asked for, people deserve answers! Umm...

Actually the whole thread at

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/43721-gph-the-wiz-official-announcement/page__view__findpost__p__640280

is probably great fun to re-read (or to read for the first time, for any newbies). Though it's just an isolated example - the forum is full of posts by Craig. On that page alone we have Craigix "strongly requesting" videos to show us what the WIZ can do. But my point is, most of the behaviour Craig has complained of forum-goers having towards OpenPandora, he himself is at least as guilty of towards GPH - who have, at least, actually shipped the WIZ (at one point it seemed debatable which would be released first - WIZ or Pandora). Craig has repeatedly slammed their behaviour (like taking preorder money MONTHS before delivering hardware) but doesn't like turn-about.

To tell you the truth, I don't think they like you very much anymore.

What, you mean after Craig slagged them off non stop on here for several weeks? I don't see why that might make them like Craig a little less

Personally, I could live with a little less righteous indignation.

The Pandora looks like a pretty nice design. Mostly an improvement over the GP2X/F-200, although it seems to suffer some of the problems that DaveC suggested might happen of a ne wconsole from GPH:

The GP2X is a good all around form factor and is very versitile. The screen aspect matches emus nice, the button layout is pretty comfortable, it can easily be rotated to portrait mode to match the 100s of arcade games and still be comfortable. It uses easily obtainable batteries that you can always get cheaply etc. Since many companies like GPH give in to fads and peer pressure they may stick us with some emu unfriendly widescreen thing with hard to get custom batteries for all we know. There always seems to be a "gotcha" with these things. There never seems to be a single handheld that gets all of the parameters right. They always seem to have some nice features but then blow it somewhere. The Gp2X is not perfect but is one of the closest in many ways. The Gp2X could be the last of its kind.

Pandora has the portrait mode problem and the custom battery issue, a number of features missing but overall seems to be just what an intelligent team would create after real EXPERIENCE with the F-200 (i.e. using it not just selling it). But as far as running the project goes... not up to the same standard as the hardware design, personally.




My order number? Sure. But it's been a blast looking up old posts again

Edit for PS. It's also scary how divided and anti-Pandora some of the GP2X forum members are. You think WE are hostile? YIKES! We're cuddly bunnies!!!

 

[Jumpman]

I have a few questions for any team member who may know the answer!

1. Will all 4000 customer cases arrive by the 22nd? Or will they arrive in smaller runs?
2. What is the the amount of fully populated boards you plan to have at that time?
3. If all boards won't be there, what is the expected time frame for shipping from texas to the UK, and how many units per delivery?
4. If all former questions are answered in the positive, how long does the team expect it to be from unit #1 assembly, to unit 4000 assembly? 1, 2 weeks? 1 month? I know nothing is written in stone, I'm just curious for a ballpark figure.

I actually have 3 seperate orders. One is early in the 250-350 range, and my second and third orders are in the 3000-4000 range, so I'm just wondering how long I can expect from the start to the end of shipping(start to finish). I'm guessing the team has some realistic plans/expectations they would like to meet, I would just like an idea of what they might be?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Mjlink]

Jumpman,

Just curious as to why you don't combine your 2nd and 3rd orders if not all three. Its not like your first order has been fulfilled. I placed two orders the first day, one for the Pandora, the rest for Accessories, which were later combined.

Peace & Space Queen,

Link

edit: thinking about it, combining would be in the community's interest as well, because boxing 3 separate orders will take longer than combining all into one, frees up space, saves some $ on shipping etc.

 

[xxnoelziexx]

Been lurking on the forums since 2008 so thought I would get my first post in I am now getting excited as the rest you here. It has come a long way since placing my order. Never did I anticipated this wait but like everything there are things out of our control. Patiently waiting it finally looks that the beginning is near I have just sold my N900 in place of this device. My work colleges laughed at me when I placed my first order and it currently in the 250ish rang. There now following the forums and all the YouTube videos so I can see a lot more people following suite now. I was watching the YouTube clips on my way to work this morning and someone was watching the eye candy too few minutes later he had his notepad and pen taking the links to here and were he could order one. He ended up being a big retro fan but not heard of the Pandora I was like were you been for the last few years. Back to the topic thanks Craig for the great news, can’t start waiting to use it on my commute to and from work.

 

[ximple]

Hello,

I've been a long time lurker and have ordered a Pandora earlier this year. I usually don't post as most of my questions seem to be asked/answered by others but there has been 1 question burning in my mind that I couldn't find the answer to.

When I placed my order, I was told that I was somewhere in the realm of 3900 to 4000 which was great news. However, I started to think of how many components (cases, boards, key pads, etc.) were going to be manufactured to make the lot of 4000 Pandoras. I keep reading the 4000 count for the cases. Was the plan to produce more components in case of failures during the assembly process? Will shifting the assembly to the UK change the extra quantity needed?

Knowing my luck, there would be 3999 Pandoras made with 1 broken one during assembly that would have been mine!

Anyways, I love the community & Device!

Cheers,
ximple

 

[MDave]

Welcome, lurkers! Who are your favourite posters and favourite moments?!

 

[mali]

@ximple
There are spare units included in the 4000. IIRC, originally 150 units were spare(correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm not sure about the accurate number), but Craig talked about freeing up some of them to preorderers. It shouldn't be a problem to make every preorderer happy.

 

[Aninhumer]

Man, am I too cynical for thinking two lurkers coming out to post suddenly seems kind of suspicious...

Yes.
Yes I am.

Clearly Craig is just diverting attention while he runs away with our money. (cue Yakkity Sax)

 

[ximple]

@ximple
There are spare units included in the 4000. IIRC, originally 150 units were spare(correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm not sure about the accurate number), but Craig talked about freeing up some of them to preorderers. It shouldn't be a problem to make every preorderer happy.

mali, thanks for the numbers. I feel better knowing that ~3 to 4 per 100 can be botched and still keep the 4000 preorders filled.

 

[ximple]

Welcome, lurkers! Who are your favourite posters and favourite moments?!

Thanks MDave! I'd have to say that I have several "favourtie" posters most of whom provide constructive substance in their post however I do enjoy the occasional ranting and prankster posters as well. It's a very diverse community here all contributing in their own way.