Why So Little Interest In The Wiz?


In what way is it buggy? Does it crash, freeze or lock up? Has the overall look of the menu changed (less bling)?

Regards

André
 
fettouhi said:
In what way is it buggy? Does it crash, freeze or lock up? Has the overall look of the menu changed (less bling)?

Regards

André
I'm not going to go into details here but the look is identical and it has the odd quirk here and there. I'm sure all will be ironed out on release!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
WarmFluffyUK said:
fettouhi said:
In what way is it buggy? Does it crash, freeze or lock up? Has the overall look of the menu changed (less bling)?

Regards

André
I'm not going to go into details here but the look is identical and it has the odd quirk here and there. I'm sure all will be ironed out on release!


OK, fair enough. But is it the boot time going to be reduced any further?

Regards

André
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I agree with the others comments though the select button on mine is faulty. It gets stuck in whenever its pressued and takes 20 minutes and a lot of rough handling to get it to pop back out :(.
 
Peter R said:
I agree with the others comments though the select button on mine is faulty. It gets stuck in whenever its pressued and takes 20 minutes and a lot of rough handling to get it to pop back out :(.
Obviously these are still pre-production models so there's gonna be the odd niggle. Could you dismantle it and take a look why it's sticking as it's probably something simple to sort out?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
WarmFluffyUK said:
Peter R said:
I agree with the others comments though the select button on mine is faulty. It gets stuck in whenever its pressued and takes 20 minutes and a lot of rough handling to get it to pop back out :(.
Obviously these are still pre-production models so there's gonna be the odd niggle. Could you dismantle it and take a look why it's sticking as it's probably something simple to sort out?

I didn't bring any of my screwdrivers or tools to Uni. I also heard from Orkie that once he had his open he could not get it to shut properly again or something.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Peter R said:
I didn't bring any of my screwdrivers or tools to Uni. I also heard from Orkie that once he had his open he could not get it to shut properly again or something.
My original unit I opened twice, it's a little fiddly, you just got to engage the red outlined plastic bit into the top section first on assembly. Also be careful of the reset button as you could quite easily damage that. Take it easy when dismantling and assembly and you should be fine. My advice is dismantle your original unit to get an idea of what you're up against. Another thing to note is the orientation of the D-PAD, as that has different length pins as the Wiz has a slight slant to the casing.

You could always ask the technical support guys at your Uni if they would give you a hand, I bet they would be quite interested in seeing the Wiz, I know we would if I didn't already have one. It's a shame you're not in our Uni as I would have sorted it out for you, I could even mod your old one giving it a centre pivot. Oh well....
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My original one does not close properly now. It is not simply a case of being a little fiddly, the plastic surrounding the SD slot just doesn't look like it was designed slot back in. It is a much earlier prototype than yours however (the case is CNC-ed rather than moulded). I wouldn't personally trust any technical support people with anything of any value, especially if it is outside what they normally encounter ;).
 
Orkie said:
My original one does not close properly now. It is not simply a case of being a little fiddly, the plastic surrounding the SD slot just doesn't look like it was designed slot back in. It is a much earlier prototype than yours however (the case is CNC-ed rather than moulded). I wouldn't personally trust any technical support people with anything of any value, especially if it is outside what they normally encounter ;).
Would BUCS be the technical support? lol.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Orkie said:
My original one does not close properly now. It is not simply a case of being a little fiddly, the plastic surrounding the SD slot just doesn't look like it was designed slot back in. It is a much earlier prototype than yours however (the case is CNC-ed rather than moulded). I wouldn't personally trust any technical support people with anything of any value, especially if it is outside what they normally encounter ;).
It depends how good the team is, I'm part of a technical support team and we can turn our hands to just about anything. You should see how fiddly some of the laptops are that we have to repair :D. But you're right about a team that just specialize in one area, they would probably end up damaging the case.

The above said, dismantling the Wiz isn't difficult, just a little delicate and fiddly! It is a tiny little thing after all :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wiz could probably do gpSP fine, it has been mentioned several times that it's possible to do hardware scaling with filtering so the result won't be that much different than PSP except that it'll look blurrier due to there being less pixels. However, the aspect ratio off in a different way so there will be black bars on the top and bottom (as opposed to the sides on PSP) wasting 26 rows (320 * 26 pixels, 8320 or 10.83%). PSP (in aspect ratio correct scaling) wastes 60 columns (272 * 60 pixels, 16320 or 12.5%) - so Wiz wastes a little less but waste is kind of bad on a smaller screen.

Still should be OK though.
 
geise69 said:
Looking at this forum there is very little talk about the new "upgrade" device from GPH. Go over the the Pandora forum and there's at least 15 topics that have posts for today. I was just wondering why there is so little interest "on a gp32/2x forum for the Wiz. Are there that many people that are disowning GPH and going for the Pandora?

Can only speak for myself, of course. Having been aware of the flaws of the early editions of the GP2X, I waited until the F-100 Mark 2 and was reasonably satisfied, having no overly high expectations on it's capabilities. However, the build quality (or lack of it) of the cradle left me with a sour taste when it comes to GPH products. For now I've chosen to put my faith in the Pandora team as they have been supportive of the community and listened to our suggestions (which is more than can be said for GPH). The higher cost doesn't really bother me, nor does being an "early adopter", as the Pandora will be so superior to the GP2X and even the Wiz in every aspect (possibly except Flash support), and I trust the team to deliver a device that doesn't have major flaws, or at least none that can't be fixed in software.

That being said, the Wiz seems like a good device for the price it's being offered at, the build quality seems better than the GP2X (from what's been said by prototype testers) and the design looks nice. The lack of Wifi and the uncertain status of certain other functions (USB, TV-out) is what's making me not pre-order one at this time. Once the specs are final and the device has been released, if those functions have been added and reviews are positive, I will most likely buy a Wiz as well, because then it will be everything the GP2X should have been, and it will be fun to see what can be done with it. But I won't trust GPH to make the Wiz into a true quality device until I've heard some praise about the final hardware and firmware, from respected devs in the community, and I won't be an "early adopter".
 
Last edited by a moderator:
cappuchok said:
geise69 said:
Looking at this forum there is very little talk about the new "upgrade" device from GPH. Go over the the Pandora forum and there's at least 15 topics that have posts for today. I was just wondering why there is so little interest "on a gp32/2x forum for the Wiz. Are there that many people that are disowning GPH and going for the Pandora?

Can only speak for myself, of course. Having been aware of the flaws of the early editions of the GP2X, I waited until the F-100 Mark 2 and was reasonably satisfied, having no overly high expectations on it's capabilities. However, the build quality (or lack of it) of the cradle left me with a sour taste when it comes to GPH products. For now I've chosen to put my faith in the Pandora team as they have been supportive of the community and listened to our suggestions (which is more than can be said for GPH). The higher cost doesn't really bother me, nor does being an "early adopter", as the Pandora will be so superior to the GP2X and even the Wiz in every aspect (possibly except Flash support), and I trust the team to deliver a device that doesn't have major flaws, or at least none that can't be fixed in software.

That being said, the Wiz seems like a good device for the price it's being offered at, the build quality seems better than the GP2X (from what's been said by prototype testers) and the design looks nice. The lack of Wifi and the uncertain status of certain other functions (USB, TV-out) is what's making me not pre-order one at this time. Once the specs are final and the device has been released, if those functions have been added and reviews are positive, I will most likely buy a Wiz as well, because then it will be everything the GP2X should have been, and it will be fun to see what can be done with it. But I won't trust GPH to make the Wiz into a true quality device until I've heard some praise about the final hardware and firmware, from respected devs in the community, and I won't be an "early adopter".
I bought my GP2X F.E. as soon as they were offered and honestly have never had a problem more serious than the joystick cap popping off. The case is well built, the screen is perfect, the buttons and switches are all responsive, the joystick works fine, and the headphone jack didn't snap off when I plugged in my headphones. I think GPH has, like any other company, issues arise with their products but, as they are a much smaller company, the issues are more visible. A company like Sony, for example, is better able to down-play it's product defects due to the sheer number of units manufactured. I think, given the size of GPH, they did a pretty good job and, when issues arose, they got on them as soon as possible. If I have the funds at the time, I'll be pre-ordering a Wiz and have no qualms about being an "early adopter".
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I think the Wiz looks like it'll be exactly what I was looking for...a couple/few years ago. This isn't a knock on the Wiz; mainly one on the GP2X. I think that the Wiz will be cool and will fit a lot of people's needs nicely. I'm kind of odd in the fact that, for the most part, I play my GP2X at home. I actually don't have a normal gaming console anymore. I'm pretty much 100% homebrew and retro gamer now. Because of this, the small size and lack of all of those fancy UMPC features don't fit what I'm looking for as much as Pandora which is (in theory) everything that I could possibly ask for in a handheld. I know that I would have a blast with a Wiz (crap, now I'm doing it too) but if Pandora ever comes out, I probably won't get one. It's actually kind of cool that these two devices took such different paths. It makes it more likely that both will survive.


Although at some point, I could end up with both if the homebrew is different on each console.
 
Back
Top