What's happening today

[craigix]

This is probably reassuring for the naysayers. It's pretty clear Craig has some idea how this will pan out and is committed to satisfying pre-orders rather than simply getting dollar signs in his eyes and laughing all the way to the bank (which he couldn't do anyway!)

Rather than $ signs I'd just love to have a new car, and by new I mean second hand.


My current one is 13 years old and has something like 245,000 miles on it, and I know it's dying. It is going though oil like it's petrol.


My girlfriend needs it to get to Uni every day and every morning I hear it taking longer and longer to start.


So looking at pages on gp32spain and seeing people think we're making millions from this depresses me. We're actually preparing to rent out rooms in our


house to make some extra money.


I have £26 in my personal bank account.


I'm living like this because I'm absolutely sure we can make this a long term success. Every last penny goes to the business and setting up solid as rock foundations. I am sure we can be the people and community who push an open machine in to the mainstream, even if it's just 1 or 2% of the mainstream market, if the foundations are solid we can keep going.

 

[neko]

We don't know if we will take more than 100 Premium orders at all. It depends how it goes and if the 100 gives us enough money to get this project in to top gear.

I thought you wanted to completely finance batch 3 so you don't have to take pre-orders. Surely paying for all of batch 3 in advance will require more than 100 premium orders?

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

This sounds good,Id be curious how many premium pandoras ye will sell.Time will tell

 

[craigix]

We don't know if we will take more than 100 Premium orders at all. It depends how it goes and if the 100 gives us enough money to get this project in to top gear.

I thought you wanted to completely finance batch 3 so you don't have to take pre-orders. Surely paying for all of batch 3 in advance will require more than 100 premium orders?

Not all at once, we're going to have a long chat about it at the weekend. We certainly don't want to sell 1000 premium units next week for example...

 

[Dead1nside]

is CC aple to make another 500 Boards until End of next week?

Oh yes, now they know what they are doing (and voices from higher up seem to have done wonders) they can speed up if we can pay them to.

That's actually quite a reassurance. One of my main initial problems with your proposal Craig, was that previously we'd heard that the assembly in the UK was not the bottleneck, but CC was. That is why I wished to see the schedule from CC, before I could assess whether your plan could see a speed increase for everyone, however you obviously no more than us (I just sometimes wish you'd be more explicit in what you share, on details, with us). If CC can hammer these boards out, and the parts for batch 2 can get in the right places, then there's no reason why premium buyers can't aid the production. It just all has to happen in concert, and that makes me nervous, as we've seen it fail due to various reasons, time and time again. Looking forward to hearing about the progress.

 

[second exodous]

I have a few friends that are geeky and a few that are Linux users and I'm sure when I show them my Pandora you'll get a few more orders. Also some of them have good computer jobs, and a few of those are single(can buy what they want), so I'm sure I can get you a few more sales. I think you'll sell more when you get more out, right now I hear a lot of 'well, I don't want to get one until I see one'. Well, that and they think it is a scam, which seeing a Pandora will clear that right up!


Also, maybe there should be a Moore's law about game consoles, I heard that it isn't until a companies second console that they make money.

 

[neko]

We don't know if we will take more than 100 Premium orders at all. It depends how it goes and if the 100 gives us enough money to get this project in to top gear.

I thought you wanted to completely finance batch 3 so you don't have to take pre-orders. Surely paying for all of batch 3 in advance will require more than 100 premium orders?

Not all at once, we're going to have a long chat about it at the weekend. We certainly don't want to sell 1000 premium units next week for example...

If you really want to pay for batch 3, you're going to need to sell at least 1000 premium units. Not all in one week, but before batch 2 is finished.

 

[craigix]

We don't know if we will take more than 100 Premium orders at all. It depends how it goes and if the 100 gives us enough money to get this project in to top gear.

I thought you wanted to completely finance batch 3 so you don't have to take pre-orders. Surely paying for all of batch 3 in advance will require more than 100 premium orders?

Not all at once, we're going to have a long chat about it at the weekend. We certainly don't want to sell 1000 premium units next week for example...

If you really want to pay for batch 3, you're going to need to sell at least 1000 premium units. Not all in one week, but before batch 2 is finished.

We have the iCP too remember. We have over 1000 spare units in batch2. But we don't want to have to send out 1000 units right now for the premium units, so we will stop them if it goes crazy, but I don't think it will, I think it will smoothly keep flowing.

 

[moxie]

We don't know if we will take more than 100 Premium orders at all. It depends how it goes and if the 100 gives us enough money to get this project in to top gear.

I thought you wanted to completely finance batch 3 so you don't have to take pre-orders. Surely paying for all of batch 3 in advance will require more than 100 premium orders?

Not all at once, we're going to have a long chat about it at the weekend. We certainly don't want to sell 1000 premium units next week for example...

This is reassuring. Or should be, to those of you who thought Craig was on a mad spree and was going to sell all the preorderers to the noveaux riches, or something.

 

[Tokiopop]

Wait, you can get your Pandora faster by paying $500?


Well, because of the exchange rate of the time, my Pandora cost me £300, which is equal to $475. If I pay another $25, can I get my pandora now?


Thanks.

 

[Linopoly]

This <100 orders per week limit (at least for this week) is an important fact that might have been helpful to mention yesterday. I never assumed that you were trying to screw over preorder customers, but there is definitely bad publicity being published elsewhere. From what's out there, I only read the Engadget story, but it has this to say at the end:

Still, those extra units have to come from somewhere, and if you've been standing in line for months, we imagine you won't happy to hear that some rich kid can just swoop in and buy your Pandora out from under you without a care in the world.

I think you or EvilDragon should spend some time to review all the third party coverage of this change for insinuations like this. You should contact them to politely state that:

• you're limiting sales to 100 for the first week, with similar numbers later, such that there will be at least a 60% increase in the rate of production for preorders versus if no $500 Pandoras were sold
  
• There's a horde of worried comments from people who think their preordered units are being sold out from under them, and it would be helpful if they published a correction that includes that information
  

Most people don't have time to follow the forums and figure this out for themselves, and it would probably be worth spending time on this for the resulting improvement in your image with these other communities who aren't hearing the whole story.

 

[XxionxX]

Wait, you can get your Pandora faster by paying $500?


Well, because of the exchange rate of the time, my Pandora cost me £300, which is equal to $475. If I pay another $25, can I get my pandora now?


Thanks.

Where have you been? This has been all that has been talked about for the last 30 some odd hours :blink: . Didn't you see the thread that has 471 posts and 19000 views!?

 

[Tokiopop]

Wait, you can get your Pandora faster by paying $500?


Well, because of the exchange rate of the time, my Pandora cost me £300, which is equal to $475. If I pay another $25, can I get my pandora now?


Thanks.

Where have you been? This has been all that has been talked about for the last 30 some odd hours :blink: . Didn't you see the thread that has 471 posts and 19000 views!?

No I just come here to check if it's out yet. Every time all I see is "soon!". Getting stupid now.

 

[liquidphantom]

So if I'm 850-950 I should get getting mine soon?

You should get an email over the weekend or on monday.

Really nice to hear. I was starting to think that my order would get bumped down another week or so with this new premium hooha as I had been told mine would ship this week just prior to to that getting announced.

 

[Mr_Loon]

Cue Dvorák: Symphony No 9 'from The New World' (The Hovis music)

Rather than $ signs I'd just love to have a new car, and by new I mean second hand.


My current one is 13 years old and has something like 245,000 miles on it, and I know it's dying. It is going though oil like it's petrol.


My girlfriend needs it to get to Uni every day and every morning I hear it taking longer and longer to start.


So looking at pages on gp32spain and seeing people think we're making millions from this depresses me. We're actually preparing to rent out rooms in our


house to make some extra money.


I have £26 in my personal bank account.


I'm living like this because I'm absolutely sure we can make this a long term success. Every last penny goes to the business and setting up solid as rock foundations. I am sure we can be the people and community who push an open machine in to the mainstream, even if it's just 1 or 2% of the mainstream market, if the foundations are solid we can keep going.

The last paragraph really sums up what this project is about, it gives me real hope.


I'd be interested if you had a goal for the number of Pandoras you'd like to see shipped, the number that would make you satisfied the Pandora filled its niche in the market.


IMHO the project will be a success if you guys break even, i.e. make enough profit to pay yourselves for the work done and clear all the debts. My guess is you'd probably have to sell 10,000 units to do that. However I see no reason that the Pandora could not have a user base of 100,000 one day. Here's hoping.

 

[craigix]

So if I'm 850-950 I should get getting mine soon?

You should get an email over the weekend or on monday.

Really nice to hear. I was starting to think that my order would get bumped down another week or so with this new premium hooha as I had been told mine would ship this week just prior to to that getting announced.

Rather than trying to build and ship 70 a day we switched the method around a little to trying to finish the units off at the end of the week for speed reasons (and to eliminate multiple car journeys with 70 units (better to take 350 and have one journey)).

 

[cosurgi]

I'm living like this because I'm absolutely sure we can make this a long term success. Every last penny goes to the business and setting up solid as rock foundations. I am sure we can be the people and community who push an open machine in to the mainstream, even if it's just 1 or 2% of the mainstream market, if the foundations are solid we can keep going.

You are right. Pandora will be a huge success. It already is, we all just need a little more bootstrapping.

 

[gadgetoid]

Rather than $ signs I'd just love to have a new car, and by new I mean second hand.


My current one is 13 years old and has something like 245,000 miles on it, and I know it's dying. It is going though oil like it's petrol.


My girlfriend needs it to get to Uni every day and every morning I hear it taking longer and longer to start.


So looking at pages on gp32spain and seeing people think we're making millions from this depresses me. We're actually preparing to rent out rooms in our


house to make some extra money.


I have £26 in my personal bank account.


I'm living like this because I'm absolutely sure we can make this a long term success. Every last penny goes to the business and setting up solid as rock foundations. I am sure we can be the people and community who push an open machine in to the mainstream, even if it's just 1 or 2% of the mainstream market, if the foundations are solid we can keep going.

Your dedication is inspirational. And it's a shame that more people don't understand just how much you, and the team, have poured into this project. It doesn't take a genius to do the maths and figure out that you're not making millions, but you should definitely make these efforts clear so they can be properly appreciated. People see the pre-orders and the orders, and the iControlPad project nearing fruition and they assume this means you're turning over mountains of cash.


I really look forward to any book you publish, chronicling what you've been through to make this project a reality. I think it will be a fantastic read, and definitely worth buying.


I sincerely hope that the Pandora project is now on the brink of full scale success, and that the iControlPad will prove to be the market dominating, industry first that it deserves to be. Both products are truly fantastic, well researched and brilliant in their own way, and I think we may have to rely on innovative upstarts like yours to give us the open alternatives we all crave in future.

 

[MarioPandio]

Some very refreshing and inspiring Q & A here!


Your personal situation is shocking Craig and shows your dedication. I think you made exactly the right choice at the right time and I hope things go really well for OPT and iCP now, as you have made some serious bits of kit, even if the PSP masses seem to have the brains of nats on the news coverage comments on this.


You´ve also created a new level for the Pandora game foxblock and others were working on


Quick question, have the broken nub RMA boards all shipped back to CC already? I held off to make sure the new boards reached new folk but my LCD is on its last legs now too

 

[DavidBowman]

We don't know if we will take more than 100 Premium orders at all. It depends how it goes and if the 100 gives us enough money to get this project in to top gear.

Wait... so Jeremy Clarkson is going to review it? I thought that they only did cars.


Pandora: simply the best open-source handheld...

...in the world!