What Have You Heard From The General Public?

[Bosbeetle]

So I travel a lot and the last 2 days I travelled with my pandora. A nice thing to do is monitor the general public. I see that people are pretty interested they look at you like you're playing a game boy.

- There was one older guy who looked at it and shook his head (more or less) until I opened up abiword and started typing a protocol for work. All of a sudden he was looking at my screen all the time.
- I had people saying that looks just like a DS but not quite.
- There was a girl that came up to me and asked for the brand, I said pandora and she said okay but whats the brand and I said pandora, and then we chatted a bit about what it can do.
- There was also a girl sitting next to me with a macbook playing a movie and for fun I started playing micromen that I put on there just for fun. She looked at it curiously but couldnt spot an apple so she went back to looking avatar (I should have mentioned her that it was called pandora )

conclusions so far general public is rather interested, and yes it does atract girls (or would it be my sexy beard and long evildragon like manes)

 

[r00tw00t]

So the Pandora is a also chick magnet huh?

 

[Bosbeetle]

So the Pandora is a also chick magnet huh?

They probably smell I already have a girlfriend.

 

[torpor]

I get funny looks when I'm out and about with the Pandora in public as well .. people go through the "wtf, why is that 40 year old guy playing with a Nintendo DS?" -> "hey is that a netbook?" -> "fuck, its smaller and better than a netbook, where can I buy one?" -> "wtf, why is that 40 year old dude an elite hacker with esoteric hardware so cooler than me?" process ..

Hint for youth: Patience and pre-order chops!

 

[Sarlix]

There was a girl

There was also a girl

yes it does attract girls

Is there no end to the Pandora's capabilities!

 

[SomeGuy99]

Comments from people I know:

"It's a total rip off of the DS!"

"The hinge seems loose"

"Those keys look awful"

"It's very big!"

Other than that, people seem to really like it. They even understood that the software would be fairly alpha at this point. Even the people who made the above comments actually liked the Pandora.

 

[trapef]

Right, this ends now !
No more talk about it attracting girls.
My wife will not be pleased, the big thumb I'm under will squash me like a bug.

Were they pretty?
Doh! Trouble again.....

 

[WizardStan]

I'm pretty sure my preorder is the only reason my girlfriend tolerates me. She wants a piece of the Pandora for herself.

 

[lulzfish]

So the Pandora is a also chick magnet huh?

They probably smell I already have a girlfriend.

Oh, that's a confounding variable.
Can any single men confirm that the Pandora attracts the ladies?

 

[Nupfi]

So the Pandora is a also chick magnet huh?

Hell yeah.

 

[roberthoward45]

i dont have mine yet but try to explain what a pandora is to someone who does not know and watch how utterly confused they get it is almost funny i tell them it is basically a net book the size of a DS that can also emulate stuff and they get confused

 

[Consequence_9]

This is actually the first post i´ve made from my panda since i got it [needed a little alone time ;D] but i felt the need to chime in on this. i've gotten so many jealous 'i hate yous' in the past few days it's hard to count. the best part is hearing their estimations on how much they think it costs. i find that everyone asks me if it can do x or y depending on the relevance of that feature to them, but the answer has yet to be no. and i really do love the kicker - pulling out my pre & teathering the two. blowsa minds every time ;]

 

[Pleng]

Nobody's asked me about it yet, and to be honest I hope nobody ever does. The device is awesome, but having to say "It's a Pandora" out loud is crigneworthy. I'd feel like an 8 year old!

 

[Wootson]

Sounds great! Already looking forward to all the talks I will have with the girls.

 

[SomeGuy99]

Nobody's asked me about it yet, and to be honest I hope nobody ever does. The device is awesome, but having to say "It's a Pandora" out loud is crigneworthy. I'd feel like an 8 year old!

I have a friend who's a huge geek, especially all thinks Linux related. Infact at times, I found her pretty dull to talk to because she seemed to be a one track record... I think she's aspergers or autistic or something TBH (not a problem, just an observation). But hey, at least I knew who I could talk to about Linux or highly geeky stuff and not get weird faces.

She was always really interested in the Pandora, and when I saw her the other day she said 'I'll have a look at it, but not now. I'm not in geek mode.' which sounds fair enough right? Well, all the time I've known her shes's never not been in geek mode. The look on her face, the body language says 'I'm trying to fit in right now and not let people know I'm weird and geeky'.

Totally overcompensating. On a personal level I'd feel a little rejected if it weren't so amusing. It's as if... she had a big falling out with someone that called her a dull and tedious geek, and now she's hilariously self concious of it. Why? It's who she is. Don't be ashamed of being a geek FFS. It's a mentality, not a fashion. If you're a geek you can never change and not be a geek - I reckon, anyway.

It's hilarious, because these days being a gadget lover or computer nerd is totally accepted. Are we back in the nineteen nighties again or something? Oh man.

So Pleng: Your self conciousness itself probably makes you look like an eight year old. It's amazing how accepting people are if you actually have confidence in what you're saying. I mean... I was on the bus the other day and the grannies were talking about DS games... how much more mature can you get than 80 years old?! And I got on the bus the other day and no less than four people were playing on an Ipod Touch. All these people were women (some of whom attractive I might add).

There is no better time than right now to be a gadget nerd. Love yourself!

Thank you. Take care of yourselves... and each other...

 

[bce23w]

Awesomeness

You're the best. Around.

With my friends, it's always games. They can talk to people in "the circle" about them, and they don't mind cautiously bringing them up with people clearly their age and gender, but everyone else, they just assume doesn't give a crap.

Being excited by something is not a crime. Un-ironically liking something is not worthy of scorn. You're an adult, and your adult self likes this thing, so people who think it's childish or stupid are mistaken, period.

 

[Prometheus]

+1 to both of you guys. So good to see other people who aren't ashamed of being who they are.

 

[SomeGuy99]

+1 to both of you guys. So good to see other people who aren't ashamed of being who they are.

It's funny, because the people my friend are trying to impress are all part of a suppressed minority in society. There's a sort of strange irony about it.

People are funny. Hehe.

Ten or fifteen years ago, playing with pocket gizmos in public was something people would judge. I think a few things changed that:

Pokemon - Biggest game in the world since Tetris, and it was handheld. I saw loads of kids walking about in public playing on Game Boys again. These kids are now teenagers, buying hi tech phones.

Mobile Phones - I noticed the change as everyone started carrying around a box of electronic whizz-bang that wasn't a Casio watch. I consider a phone a handheld computer, and from this point on handhelds became a mainstream status symbol.

Laptops - You had to be rich to buy one in the ninties. Now people want to surf the net sat on the couch... laptop prices came down, and people chose to buy one instead of a new desktop machine. I don't know anyone except PC gamers who buy desktop PCs anymore.

Netbooks - The average person started with a desktop in the nighties, upgraded it in the 2010's, then moved to a laptop. But after buying some huge overheating multimedia slab, they kind of wanted something they could carry around without getting shoulder ache. Plus, netbooks fit inside handbags.

Iphone - Dislike it if you may, but it's changed the mentality of people from 'My phone is an appliance' to 'My phone is a little computer'. The Pandora is one step on from this, running actual desktop software.

The future:

Just my opinion, but something which converges the usefulness and ability of a netbook with the appliance like nature and power envelope of an Iphone is maybe where the mainstream is heading. The Pandora... kind of fits into this space.

I think all computers in the future will be handheld.

The big problem is the screen size thing. Virtual screens (projected into your retina/glasses/contacts) is where we are headed (again, my opinion). If you think about it... it makes sense.

Some kind of router/monitorless desktop/Server/backup drive combination will be what many people have at home. It'll save and stream data from and to the handhelds of your house and you'll never use it like a traditional computer. It'll be the place you backup all your files, act as a wireless access point and internet router, perform extra computation that your handhelds can't pull off (like media transcoding, maybe even games).

Most stuff will just be streamed straight off the net... but people like having their own store of files.

I see early adopters doing this stuff already. It makes sense for it all to be converged in one household unit.

 

[paulguy]

Eh I still get crap occasionally for talking about nerdy stuff too much. Mostly when I go on about it for too long. not a big deal but I can see where self-consciousness can come from!

EDIT: for the pandora itself, I don't have one yet, but it can definitely be hard to describe what the pandora is to some people. I'm really bad at describing stuff.

 

[gibberish]

i finally told my mates about it just before it arrived. one of them was quite enthusiastic about it and the next time i saw him he had visited the website and seen a bunch of vids on youtube too. i took it out last night and showed it to him, played the "state of the art" amiga 500 demo to him (it was him that first showed it to me many many years ago) and a few other bits and bobs and he could not believe that it only cost me £200. when i pulled the stylus out and started tapping the screen instead of using nubs that pretty much did it - he was well impressed. one of my other mates quickly fired up quake 3 and seemed fairly impressed, though he couldnt really control it very well with the nubs (he's an ASWD and mouse guy).

even the people who have had to suffer hearing about this thing for years (my bro and his lady, my girlfriend and my housemates) are generally pretty impressed. my dad can't understand why i'd need "yet another bloody computer" but he is technically minded and once i show it to him i reckon he'll understand.

i'm gona take it out with me today, if i get any reaction from the public i'll be sure to comment about it later