You Can See A Pandora Tomorrow At Teesside University


I think there was about 25 people there. I counted 19 when I arrived and more showed up while i was getting ready.

I liked the Pizza, it was very buttery though, deep pan.
 
Or anywhere, for that matter. Two weeks holiday for me, so I may be able to do a bit of travelling, parent permitting.
 
'Phawx' said:
'Peter R' said:
God dammit I missed free Pizza. Was it Dominoes?
Why would you care about free Dominos?


Because Domino's is better than any other US chain? (I can't vouch for chains in other countries)

-God Ginrai
 
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'Phawx' said:
@PokeParadox
Could you please tell me how you liked the controls?
Thanks Man.
The controls felt very comfortable, although I was kinda dumbstruck by the sexiness of the screen when Craig handed the prototype to me... that screen is so so so sharp and gorgeous to look at!

'Peter R' said:
We await video. This is where we find out pokeparadox caught the wrong connection...
Um not quite my battery ran out unfortunately :( I'm so sorry guys, but I'll write up a very descriptive bit on what was covered if you like!

'craigix' said:
Most people seemed interested, I guess I assumed they knew more than they did in some cases, someone asked how cut down XP would be on it, I guess I didn't explain the open source thing very well.

My talk in Newcastle was better in that respect, but I was trying not to just give a repeat talk as I noticed some people seemed to already know about the Pandora.

It's tricky to get a good balance, I'm sure I'll get better at it!
Um... sorry one of those some peoples was me... a gp32x.de spy! :p I was going to say hi a bit better but you seemed to want that pizza Craig! :D

'magicman5421' said:
did anyone get that video?
any impressions?
and i'm bummed i couldn't go, but airfare to the uk is expensive... :(
Again sorry I really WAS going to take a video, and yah it would have been a bit of expense for the length of the talk... :)

I'll type something up soon. but in short, the Pandora is really much better to see up close, the weight feels just right the controls feel comfortable and it's amazing the screen is so vivid and clear!
Day well spent, there was trip to the local pub over there after the talk. Had time to stay for one before getting back on a train! :)
 
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'PokeParadox' said:
'Phawx' said:
@PokeParadox
Could you please tell me how you liked the controls?
Thanks Man.
The controls felt very comfortable, although I was kinda dumbstruck by the sexiness of the screen when Craig handed the prototype to me... that screen is so so so sharp and gorgeous to look at!

'Peter R' said:
We await video. This is where we find out pokeparadox caught the wrong connection...
Um not quite my battery ran out unfortunately :( I'm so sorry guys, but I'll write up a very descriptive bit on what was covered if you like!

'craigix' said:
Most people seemed interested, I guess I assumed they knew more than they did in some cases, someone asked how cut down XP would be on it, I guess I didn't explain the open source thing very well.

My talk in Newcastle was better in that respect, but I was trying not to just give a repeat talk as I noticed some people seemed to already know about the Pandora.

It's tricky to get a good balance, I'm sure I'll get better at it!
Um... sorry one of those some peoples was me... a gp32x.de spy! :p I was going to say hi a bit better but you seemed to want that pizza Craig! :D

'magicman5421' said:
did anyone get that video?
any impressions?
and i'm bummed i couldn't go, but airfare to the uk is expensive... :(
Again sorry I really WAS going to take a video, and yah it would have been a bit of expense for the length of the talk... :)

I'll type something up soon. but in short, the Pandora is really much better to see up close, the weight feels just right the controls feel comfortable and it's amazing the screen is so vivid and clear!
Day well spent, there was trip to the local pub over there after the talk. Had time to stay for one before getting back on a train! :)

bummer on the battery dude, but oh well. plenty of video around anyway.
nice to hear from a regular forumer about how it feels, ugh i'm really excited!
 
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damn im annoyed I missed it now, I was literally 20 seconds away, damy my greedyness
 
'PokeParadox' said:
Um... sorry one of those some peoples was me... a gp32x.de spy! :p I was going to say hi a bit better but you seemed to want that pizza Craig! :D
You should have come over, I had Quake2 and Quake3 ready to play, but no one seemed that interested in playing with it, rather they just wanted to talk about it (or no one dared to ask to use it!).

It would have been better if we had had a table to sit at and pass it around in a more casual way, I'd have come to the pub if my throat had not been burning up, it's feeling much better now too, damn it.
 
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you should come and do a talk in the states, new york city would be a great place for publicity! (and then i could come and watch :D)
 
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'craigix' said:
'PokeParadox' said:
Um... sorry one of those some peoples was me... a gp32x.de spy! :p I was going to say hi a bit better but you seemed to want that pizza Craig! :D
You should have come over, I had Quake2 and Quake3 ready to play, but no one seemed that interested in playing with it, rather they just wanted to talk about it (or no one dared to ask to use it!).

It would have been better if we had had a table to sit at and pass it around in a more casual way, I'd have come to the pub if my throat had not been burning up, it's feeling much better now too, damn it.


The fact that it's a prototype is quite intimidating... :D
Oh well, if you have another tour on the roadshow and I can make it, I'll make more of an effort to introduce myself...
 
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I won't bore you with the journey up there I'll just get to the Craig talky bit.
The talk was very relaxed and honest which was great. Craig started off speaking of the GP2X and how he used to be into importing these quirky devices, with a big photo of :gp2x on the screen.
He then went on to talk about his relationship with GPH and how they didn't quite "get" the open-source gadget loving market that Craig was wanting to sell their device to.
More photos of GP2X design ideas with a sliding screen to reveal a keyboard, which were sent to GPH but they were never ready to make the changes, and this was the difficulty in working with them.

Then he described the frustration in trying to get the changes into a device which ultimately was out of his control and that's what provoked the idea of creating a new self-manufactured console.

Many early diagrams and ideas sketches were shown which you could see progressing into what we know as the Pandora.
Craig then explained the plan was to use a MagicEyes SoC and it was eventually revealed that it wasn't quite what we thought it was, and then they decided to go with the TI OMAP... which is what is under the hood now.

He also covered the difficulties in trying to build a product entirely in the UK... unfortunately no manufacturer is really interested to do this. So Manufacturing was done in Texas in TI's factory. Additionally he described that he has some empathy for GPH by experiencing first hand difficulties in changing parts and design revisions... difficulties equating to cost!

Then more photos of the various renders of what the finished Pandora is going to look like.

The problems of preorders and banking troubles were talked about in very straightforward detail. And things like "The bank froze our account and was expecting all the orders to gradually request cancellations, but all of the money just stayed there and the bank didn't really know what to make of that" It's all interesting stuff to hear about the story straight from the horses mouth.

Finally Craig pulled it out and mentioned the battery life... and mentioned about playing Quake III on it and it being very comfortable. Estimated there was about 3hrs of battery left there(7hrs of Quake III Craig? :p)

Someone asked about multimedia playback, Craig launched XMMS and then I got to *gasp* hold it. I mentioned before, it is very comfortable. The nubs are easily reachable and I'm a short guy, with proportional hands. I didn't do much apart from stare at the screen and twiddle the nubs and press the buttons, but that's such a nice screen so much detail in so little handheld console.

A few questions were asked, some a bit off the mark like the XP question, and others like "Is you leg feeling better?" that only insiders like me would think to ask! ;)
But there was definitely interest in that room and I found out a couple of people there had a preorder on the device. And I think I may have twisted a few arms to try and get one of the few 1st batch orders that are left!
Then there was PIZZA and the pub... :)
 
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magicman5421 said:
you should come and do a talk in the states, new york city would be a great place for publicity! (and then i could come and watch :D)

Might have better luck getting MWeston to make a trip somewhere. It's only a few hundred dollars flight from central Canada to Buffalo.
 
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'WizardStan' said:
'magicman5421' said:
you should come and do a talk in the states, new york city would be a great place for publicity! (and then i could come and watch :D)

Might have better luck getting MWeston to make a trip somewhere. It's only a few hundred dollars flight from central Canada to Buffalo.
And it would be much cheaper if he flew to NYC (LaGuardia, JFK, or Newark). They're all larger airports, and airfare would be less.
 
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Maybe we should not traffick our prototypes across the country side and instead spend time on stress-testing?
 
I think they already did that. ;)
 
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