The Pandora Will Be Sllooww ?

[paddy]

I think the Pandora will be rather slow at running anything other than small desktop tasks as its running from sd
memory and i would see that as a huge bottleneck for multitasking ,dont get me wrong as a single task solution
like running an emulator in a closed enviroment it would be fine but i dare anyone to show me a device such
as a fairly powerfull laptop or pc running firefox 3 with or without youtube running ,a media file such as an mp3 and
an online radio stream ,or even a mixture or other apps running without a lockdown and dont even try skype.

I come back to this point that i have try'd many linux distros to date on a dell mini and a fujistu laptop both
had 1gb ram and 1.6 centrino-1.8 atom intel cpu and both had intel extreme graphics that do not pose any problems
in a hard drive installed enviroment.And when i say i have try'd different distros i am talking about
a full blown ubuntu 8.04 - 9.10 to extremely fast and small linux mint ,moblin and dsl with the most
lightweight desktop enviroments and yet i promise you both these machines are slow and frustrating
to use for anything other than a spot of slow freezing at times web browsing and light media playback.

I fail to see why the underpowered Pandora will be any different even with a custom built distro running
even with a distro running the best possible drivers for the Pandora i think the problem will be the fact
its running from sd ,so if i am right i hope you all expect a not so great general use pale linux distro
that will do nothing but frustrate and annoy you,to give an example i have writen this post on the dell mini
with a clean Ubuntu 9.10 install ,8gb sd with firefox and it has frozen ,washed out the screen 6 times
while typing ,try doing more than this simple task and theres time to go make coffee.

It's also amazing how this forum has changed but remains the same ,i used to bash the Pandora
months ago but now i more or less sit back and watch and read about how the Pandora is making progress
but i see many new people are here with fresh anticipation patience and funding and then are ready to
get pissed and demand answers just like the others did a year ago ,its the same old questions and promises
but new people on here and its always funny or rather pathetic to see some people stand up ready to defend
their beloved Pandora simply becase they put money in and dont want to look so stupid when there's delay
after delay but in the end they usualy quietly leave with a refund after having enough only to be greeted
with more new fresh funding and newbee questions only to get shot down by the over anoyed pissed
few that are holding on for dear life ,why defend the OP team ? you all have the right to ask anything
you want ,there should be a banning rule on here but OP likes it this way - read up -


Merry Christmas Everyone

 

[BaDToaD]

It will be interesting to see you eat your words.

 

[kagato]

I think the Pandora will be rather slow at running anything other than small desktop tasks as its running from sd
memory

While the OS can boot and run from SD (eg. for recovery purposes), normally it will boot from NAND.

and i would see that as a huge bottleneck for multitasking

Why? Do you think it's using flash memory as RAM or something?
There's 512MB NAND for permanent storage, but it also has 256MB SDRAM. That might not be workstation standards, but it's pretty bloody good for a pocketable device.

(etc)

tl:dr;

 

[streak]

..or tongue

Of course You have few very good points in first post, but as long as we dont get Pandora, we cannot confront anything [ more or less ].

 

[pelrun]

You really have to go back and learn what the difference between RAM and flash storage is :rolleyes:

Besides, the OS is *not* on the SD card, it's on the internal flash storage. And 'underpowered'? This is sounding more and more like a failed trolling attempt.

i used to bash the Pandora months ago

Yup, bad trolling attempt.

 

[mali]

I won't discuss the last chapter of your post, as it doesn't belong here, but regarding SSD/SD speed I made acompletely different experience.
I own an Aspire One A110L, which is known for its extremely slow SSD, but Linpus boots in 15sec and does multitasking like a champ
If you put on XP, though, you have to do tricks like using enhanced write filter.
So it clearly depends on OS optimization. Look at the N900 for example, it does multitasking quite well, too

 

[gruso]

Of course You have few very good points in first post, but as long as we dont get Pandora, we cannot confront anything [ more or less ].

Exactly. None of us (customers) have actually used one yet, so we can't really argue the point.

I road tested a few distros on my Eee701 (900mhz, 512mb). Everything ran poorly to be honest. But I wouldn't bother comparing a garden variety Linux distro running on an anaemic x86 machine, to a highly optimised embedded distro running on unified ARM hardware. If you know what I mean.

So Paddy... did you try Angstrom?

 

[EvilDragon]

Yeah, I have to admit that N64 emulator running fullspeed with FS 1 was way too slow

Geez, of course the OS won't run as fast as on a Quadcore Desktop PC.
Of course you can't expect to run GIMP and work on 10MP images or Blender... but that's not what I wanted to do on such a small screen anyways.

The Pandora is not a Desktop PC replacement, it's still mainly a gaming console (a pretty fast one) and because the SoC is so powerful, it CAN run a full Linux desktop with normal apps (Abiword, Midori, Pidgin, etc.) in comfortable speed. But it will never run high-demanding desktop tools. As won't any other current device in that size.

The Pandora is very fast for its size, but don't expect any wonders.

One very good thing is that it runs a standard Linux system: Pickle just ported AlephOne, Gianas Return, fheroes2, SuperTux and CDogs within a few days as there is mostly no hacking needed like for other handhelds, you simply compile it and it works.

 

[streak]

Small OT
ED, can you tell something more about keyboard. Is it suitable to fast-type a lot of texts [ coding / decuments ] or
not. Im planning to use it as a quick document correction machine and/or handy coding/develop machine.

 

[Nintendo]

The Pandora is not a Desktop PC replacement, it's still mainly a gaming console

ED pretty much sums up why Pandora shouldn't be criticized (by how it performs as a umpc) and compared to a desktop PC, let alone notebooks.

 

[Chip]

No good can possibly come from this thread.