What needs to be done before a Pyra prototype can be produced?

[slaeshjag]

I run out of RAM all the time on my laptop with 4 GB of RAM. I keep a view up of current RAM and swap usage visible at all times so that I can close shit before the OOM killer gets to it :v

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Once the prototypes are out, what is the timeline for the regular units?

 

[TrashyMG]

Once the prototypes are out, what is the timeline for the regular units?

when they're ready, stop thinking in terms of deadlines...

 

[Silent-Hunter]

when they're ready, stop thinking in terms of deadlines...

I was under the impression that if the prototypes worked then that meant it was ready for mass production. But earlier I remember reading that prototypes were guaranteed to come out at least a month before regular units.

I'm not asking for a deadline, I'm asking if ED is going to wait to release the regular units even if the prototypes work well. Not asking for any dates.

 

[Grench]

It is in ED's best interest to have them come out, as soon as they can do so, in such a state that very few will come back.

 

[the_marshal]

Hmm, I just checked... I rarely hit 2GB RAM usage on my desktop system (ArchLinux).
It has 4GB RAM, which is more than enough than what I need

Memory usage is obviously very dependent on the desktop environment and application you are running.
Web Browser alone can use quite a lot of memory. Firefox currently using 1.2G on my system with ~30 tabs open. I don't consider that to be that many on a desktop, although what is likely more that I would use on the Pyra.

What I am wondering is what would happen if you only had 2GB of RAM in your desktop system... just because application are not using all the ram does not mean the RAM is wasted. Caching can be extremely important for performance.

Maybe this is somewhat off-topic but feel like sharing it as it really made me think about memory usage.
I am working with OpenLDAP (a directory service) which has multiple database back-end available.
One of them is BDB (Berkeley DB) while another (more modern) is LMDB (Lightning Memory-Mapped Database).

The 2 database handle caching very differently: BDB has it's own internal caching while LMDB has no caching of its own and rely solely on the OS caching. So looking at the "real" memory usage of both database process does not show the whole picture.
LMDB require that have some amount of cache in RAM if you expect any time of decent performance.

 

[Mr_Loon]

Hmm, I just checked... I rarely hit 2GB RAM usage on my desktop system (ArchLinux).
It has 4GB RAM, which is more than enough than what I need

We had some fairly detailed discussions here about the 'need' for 4GB of Ram.

As mentioned in the above linked thread what I'm really looking forward to are some real world tests comparing the 2GB & 4GB versions showing things like the implications for battery life & swap file performance etc. Fingers crossed that the 4GB stability issues are solved soon.

From a personal perspective I'd like to be able (eventually) to use the Pyra with a 'virtual machine' running Android with 1-2GB of dedicated Ram whilst being able to use the pyra with a 'desktop like' experience for multi tabbed browsing / image editing etc. under a Linux environment.

It's fully appreciated though that for many users 2GB will be enough.

FWIW I still maintain that having a 4GB option will be a huge boon for future sales of the Pyra and it is also worth exploring the idea of selling the 4GB version at a premium price and using the extra profits generated from the premium price to subsidise the cost of the 2GB version thus allowing the cost of the base model to be lowered. This could of course be done when Pyras are available off the shelf and the current non premium price of the 4GB version to be considered a pre order loyalty bonus. That does of course depend on whether the plan is to still produce the 2GB version as approx 98% of pre order sales are for the 4GB version.....