Why Is It Worth Waiting For Pandora?

[bzar]

Not open source, no linux, no community, much more expensive

It's funny how you made my point in your post

Also no gaming controls

 

[Svartalf]

Because despite of the difficulties, the project seems to be healthy and reliable compared to corporates shooting blanks with money.

People shouldn't underestimate the level of difficulty the dev team is facing with in the Pandora project.

It's cool that the dev team interacts with the community here.

(It's unfortunate the banks caused so much confusion, tough I never use Paypal.)


Like I said repeatedly in the past: The sole difference between OP and Sony or Nintendo is that you're all seeing the pains that EVERYBODY goes through on a regular basis on new product dev. It's a blindingly rare instance you don't get at least 2/3rds or more of what we've seen up to this point.

 

[Svartalf]

I think if the Pandora was released before 2009 it would be a much better hit, the technology in it is getting outdated afterall the life of consumer electronics is bearly a year nowadays.

There's still not any OMAP3 based gear save the Beagleboard in people's hands and the Snapdragon and iMX515 stuff's just now demoing as prototypes. It's not outdated by a longshot, it's just not at the bloody edge anymore. It's merely at the forefront of things now.

 

[Exophase]

I think if the Pandora was released before 2009 it would be a much better hit, the technology in it is getting outdated afterall the life of consumer electronics is bearly a year nowadays.

There's still not any OMAP3 based gear save the Beagleboard in people's hands and the Snapdragon and iMX515 stuff's just now demoing as prototypes. It's not outdated by a longshot, it's just not at the bloody edge anymore. It's merely at the forefront of things now.

You're forgetting the Gumstix Overo. You can get one with bluetooth/wifi, and they've rolled out variants that have the full OMAP3530. The thing is tiny and pretty cheap, and I shudder to imagine if someone wanted to make a handheld that had one inside because they probably could just by fabbing a daughter board and some cables instead of a board with the OMAP3530. Might even be able to use one of Overo's small daughterboards for this task, although I don't know if you can easily get a good LCD going with those pulling the LCD signals out to HDMI.

Fun to think about, maybe someone can make a project of it. Convert some other handheld to something with a Gumstix inside.

Oh, and you forgot the Archos PMPs that have OMAP35xx as well. That's been out for many months now.

 

[Svartalf]

You're forgetting the Gumstix Overo. You can get one with bluetooth/wifi, and they've rolled out variants that have the full OMAP3530.

Heh... I'll give you the Archos- but it's not in the same segment and it's not usable the way we're going to use it. The Overo though...

$219 for the Fire version (comparable to what we're getting...).
$70 for the Tobi expansion module.

And that doesn't put a touchpanel LCD in the mix. All you're getting for $300 is a smaller profile beagleboard.
Quantity discount doesn't bring enough to the table to make that pathway worth anyone's while unless they're trying to wedge the power of a Pandora into a Nokia N800 size packaging.

Brass tacks, we're still not "outdated" yet. Will be soon, but people keep talking like it's dead ancient, which it's not.

 

[darkblu]

Brass tacks, we're still not "outdated" yet. Will be soon, but people keep talking like it's dead ancient, which it's not.

on the average, people's motives to say this or that have little to bear with facts. i'd bet you a beer that the majority of the people proclaiming pandora an 'old hat' do that out of impatience/boredom/justification of another gadget's purchase/plain old stupidity and, oh well, ignorance - the "dark matter" of the human intellect.

 

[eksasol]

I mean the ipod touch and the psp can pretty much do the same things as the Pandora. Ipod touches have an app store and many of the apps are free, and if it isnt enough you can jailbreak your ipod. Psp's can run home brew as long as it had been hacked.

Keep in mind that the Pandora is 360 bucks with shipping(not including SD card cost). You can get 2 Nintendo dsi. The Pandora may have a lot of power but it looks like it isn't living up to its potential. Does "Pandora panic" look any better graphics to you than "resistance retribution"? its the same thing as the 360 and the ps3. The ps3 is way more powerful but do the graphics look any better?

The ipod touch has an aluminum casing, an accelorometer, and an award winning gui. The pandora's gui looks like its so hard to press on thing with the tiny icons. The pandora had a bigger screen but on the other hand it is about twice the size. The quality of the pandora's screen looks no better than the ipods.

Keep in mind that psp, ds, and ipod go on sale. The pandora does not. And who knows if this is going to be a total flop and developers are going to quit making crap for it. I also don/t see the point of open source. Closed source looks better than open source to me. Open source thing look like the quality of the software it worse, but that's just my 2 cents.

I admit the Pandora looks better than other products but I'm not waiting all this time and in the end see that its a total flop and the quality is crap or something like that. You know those cheap Chinese mp4 players that sell on eBay for 10 bucks. They look so good until you buy them. ill just be looking for a good deal on something professional and if the Pandora comes out before i find something i might as well buy it if its good.


Oh ya and username i never said i didnt like the pandora i said the shit is taking too long to fuckin come out.

It can run a full ARM operating system like debian and ubuntu, or just the Padora's Angstorm. I can install whatever arm software I want and do work like I'm on a full desktop operating system. the DSi and PSP are just handheld to me comparing to this Pandora which is more like a netbook with more productive feature. iPhone is different, it's first and foremost designed as a phone, but it's graphic perform will be too weak to play 3d games. Besides boycotting Sony, I really don't care for sony fomats and don't want to waste money on it, umd and memory stick. Also I feel like dork if I let other see me with a PSP.

$360 is pretty good considering these cheap asus eeepc with weak graphic cards and doesn't have gaming control. But gaming isn't the reason why I want to buy the pandora it's more of a bonus, if I want game only I could live with the Wiz base from what I see.

 

[Shaun199three]

I use to be into video game consoles and spent alot of money on them. Until I got a gaming laptop. The games were great but the best thing about it was the ability to do many other things on the laptop besides playing games unlike most commercial gaming consoles. But the one problem with my laptop it is hardly portable (it has a 17inch screen) and only has 2 hour battery life. The Pandora is the answer to this problem. It can do the basic things that a computer can do but its extremely portable and unlike many other things this portable , it doesn't need to lose the essential features like the qwerty keypad, the wifi, the blutooth and the high resolution screen.

For me the wait has only been a few weeks because i only found out and ordered the Pandora just before April.

 

[zappy]

OK, here goes ... it's worth waiting because:

I've had several PDAs. They all had their uses (the old black-and-white Handspring Visors in particular still make excellent little backlit e-text readers, and they'll run forever on two AAAs), but none of them ever did everything I thought they would. Which is a pity, since you can stick 'em in a pocket and GO.

I've had several game consoles and "home computers", from Atari 2600 and TI-99 on up. I still love 'em all, but they don't get hooked up too often anymore. Which is a pity, since they're so much fun.

I've had several laptops, first for school, then for work. They do all sorts of nifty stuff, but none of them have ever had battery capacity worth half a damn. Which is a pity, since there's nothing sadder than a sleek lightweight laptop perma-tethered to a power outlet.

HOWEVER The Pandora does just about everything all that other junk does - only, it will do so anywhere you want, all day long. And if you don't like how it works, you can get under the hood and CHANGE IT. And there will be ~3999 (plus devs) other fantastically lucky people doing the same thing.

I've waited many years for this. Another couple of months are nothing.

 

[psj3809]

I've waited many years for this. Another couple of months are nothing.

I agree, i think the only mistake the devs made was making it so public. Obviously people thought it would come out last year, then Q1 this year. I think if in 5-10 years time Craig and co made a Pandora Mk II they wouldnt even mention any dates and then after months of development etc announce when its shipping and thats that.

I do like reading about the latest designs/prototypes etc and know these things can drag out a fair bit, just want to see this hit the market at some point and i hope it does well for all involved.

 

[meva]

I first found out about the Pandora about October last year. Seemed like a great ( and powerful ) toy for £179.99 ,alas they were long since sold out. I've been intermittantly watching the situation since then, I've seen the price go up, people angrily turning away from the project frustrated by the long wait.
I've just ordered one of the spares from the 1st batch ( hopefully ) largely because it is still a nice gadget and also because I felt I wanted to support the project.
For me it's worth waiting for because the guys behind it are working so hard to get it out

 

[Bosbeetle]

I first found out about the Pandora about October last year. Seemed like a great ( and powerful ) toy for £179.99 ,alas they were long since sold out. I've been intermittantly watching the situation since then, I've seen the price go up, people angrily turning away from the project frustrated by the long wait.
I've just ordered one of the spares from the 1st batch ( hopefully ) largely because it is still a nice gadget and also because I felt I wanted to support the project.
For me it's worth waiting for because the guys behind it are working so hard to get it out

I think by now they wake up screaming after dreaming about the pandora.

 

[MaxSteiner]

It's worth waiting for because you've been waiting all this time for it

 

[Monk]

It's worth waiting because they've got my money?

 

[hells_dark]

Because it's what I want.

 

[mindlord]

Because even after a year of "delays" it's still the most functional device in it's class. No other device packs more computing/gaming/hacking fun into such a small chassis. Not to mention the fact that the price is right. If a Pandora-like device were created by Dell, HP, Nokia, LG, Motorola, or some other computer/portable device manufacturer it would cost twice as much, and probably do half of what the Pandora should be able to do.

*Mindlord continues to wait patiently*

 

[lulzfish]

I'm surprised no other company has tried that yet. I guess they're afraid that leaving Windows will keep anyone from buying it.

 

[Trip]

..because of the freedom that it brings.

The Pandora has the opportunity to fill in one of the last hurdles that open source and free software faces; getting companies to release games for more than just the Windows operating system will be better for everybody.
If I buy a game I want to be able to run it from a Linux install or whatever operating system I choose. A powerful, portable computer with gaming controls built in to it has the potential to help make this a reality. It's already making some of the bigger companies sit up and take notice and it hasn't even been released yet.

It will help people learn to code. It's a lot more fun to learn something like coding when you have a dedicated open platform to not only write software for, but can be used for the actual coding itself. There's also the fact that 99% of people who learn to code for the Pandora will be learning to code with free/cross platform tools, which is also better for everybody.
Personally I'm hoping that a lot of the Pandora's later batches will be bought by colleges and university's world wide to help students learn how to code.

 

[mindlord]

Amen to that brother!

 

[ashdjones]

It's worth waiting because they've got my money?

:lol: