Do Any Of You Have Regrets?


Also, whilst I'm doing that and evildragon is around, can you give me any instructions on what to do on this? When I boot up, before I get to the desktop, it says 'could not look up internet address' this will prevent Xfce from working correctly. It may be possible to correct the problem by adding my pandora to file/etc/hosts on your system. Any ideas what a spaz like me should do with that information?
 
NickLoTurco said:
Cheers dude, I think I'll delete them all and re-download them into menu, will let you know what happens!

BTW how is evince installed and which one should I use?

I find the left nub inconsistent too, I'm sure that'll be rectified.

Evince being a PDF viewer? I don't think there is a PND for that yet. ED said he was going to make one but I don't know if he has done that yet. There was talk of downloading it from the Angstrom repositories but it was a advised against because you would have to install it to NAND.
 
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It seemed to work (thankyou so much!), although I'm yet to run them all yet! Fennec still won;t show up. When I go into the menu on my pandora, all the icons for the emu's and exaile are diamond shaped (recognised by the pandora), Fennec comes up as a text like icon. Is the file corrupt, it's freshly downloaded too. I prefered it to Arora too as Arora won't let me open hotmails.
 
NickLoTurco said:
It seemed to work (thankyou so much!), although I'm yet to run them all yet! Fennec still won;t show up. When I go into the menu on my pandora, all the icons for the emu's and exaile are diamond shaped (recognised by the pandora), Fennec comes up as a text like icon. Is the file corrupt, it's freshly downloaded too. I prefered it to Arora too as Arora won't let me open hotmails.


Well none of my programs/apps have any icons :huh: They are all just text 'icons'. Fennec can be found under 'Network' It doesn't load instantly, may take 5 - 10 seconds. I presume you have the Fennec PND in the pandora/menu folder as well?
 
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mali said:
Nick, try what I posted in the other thread in the help section.


Aye, mali made a rather useful Help Thread, it's stickied in the help section. :)
 
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NickLoTurco said:
Well I'm not going to format the card with my working pnd's on, I'd have to empty it first yes?! I might format my empty one and see what happens. Thanks guys.


Yeah take off your PND's before formatting and anything else you want to keep. I take it all of your apps are working OK now? All showing up in the menu?

When you made the folders: pandora/menu, it should have automatically created another folder called 'appdata' this is where all of your folders/files relating to your PND apps will be. And where your ROMS need to go. (in the corresponding folders of course)


And to get back on topic>

Azure said:
The shoulder buttons are, well, SHIT.

I have to agree on this point, they really are shoddy lol.
 
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Azure said:
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS MY BRUTALLY HONEST OPINIONS ABOUT MY EARLY BATCH PANDORA AFTER 2 DAYS OF USE. IF YOU ARE A FANBOY OR ARE OFFENDED EASILY BY NEGATIVE COMMENTS TOWARDS THIS HANDHELD (you know who you are...), YOU BEST MOVE ALONG NOW.

I have some regrets about the hardware, which may just be a result of getting an early unit. But what bothers me is that throughout the course of this project we've recognized that gaming is an important part of the Pandora, and being obsessed with "proper" gaming controls has definitely been an important part of the design...or at least it should have been. Considering how much I paid, how long I waited, and all the emphasis that has been placed on the Pandora's gaming controls (to distinguish it from "competing" products, to say it has gaming controls made by *real* gamers and not just by big corporations, etc. that whole mindset...):

The D-Pad is superbly designed, but my right direction is less sensitive than the others (sometimes I can almost get the D-Pad to rock almost the entire distance to the right before it registers...); that is disappointing. It's not as bad as the others though:

The two nubs feel different, seem to have different tensions, and are a pain/difficult to calibrate (still have not successfully calibrated them; some directions are slightly more biased than others; sometimes I'm holding the nub all the way in a certain direction but the cursor crawls across, move the nub the direction the other way and it zips across, move it back the other way and it zips across again...inconsistent); that is disappointing. With so much money spent on these nubs and all the raving I've heard from the OpenPandora team about them, I really hope I eventually get them "working properly" and can experience what's so great about them.

The shoulder buttons are, well, SHIT. They are somehow not secured awkwardly or something to the case as they have a weird wiggle to them, but they are also tight as hell and have very little spring to them. They are a PITA to use, especially if you are coming from the DS Lite (you can say whatever you want about the size or placement of the DS Lite shoulder buttons, but their raw mechanics trump the Pandora's); Complete slap to the face of a gamer that invested so much time & money into this product. With such dodgy shoulder buttons, I feel like I have a cheap Chinese knock-off handheld...I pray that somehow the shoulder buttons will become much, much, MUCH better with time.

Software will get better with time, so I have no complaints/regrets there.

And just for those that can't stand a post that doesn't say anything positive about this project now that units are finally shipping:

-The QWERTY keypad is awesome. Excellent job here. Very comfortable to use and I got used to it very quickly.
-Love that it runs a full Linux distribution (great with the combined keyboard)...despite it taking so long to arrive, my friends are still impressed that it's like a netbook, but *even* smaller
-Screen is really nice. Really sinks in the 800 x 480 factor of the screen when you use the desktop environment. When people suggest a PSP as an alternative to the Pandora, I don't think they quite realize how much you lose by going from the Pandora screen to the PSP screen...
-PNDs are pretty easy to use; never really had a problem getting them detected. Neat system.
-Love the size. Not too small that it doesn't fit comfortably into your hand, but not too big that you can't slide it into a pocket.
-Battery life is as great as the OpenPandora team has advertised; no lies here.

+1 on all of this.

The PSP screen seems really crap now I go back; I can visibly see the pixels like it's an original Game Boy! Same with my Ipod Touch. They feel like old tech compared to the Pandora.

The shoulder buttons are crap, sadly. I hope we have some option to mod them in future.

My nubs have exactly the same issues on mine. They work fine in Quake 2 though! I find if you press down on them at all they go all stiff and move very slowly for a while.

I have no regrets though, because:

As a Linux portable it rocks!

As a full computer in my hand it rocks!

As an emulation machine it rocks (apart from the crap shoulder buttons).

As a video playing unit it takes the prize.

Internet browsing on a full browser is just nice. It can (sort of, bit laggy on the javascript) run the full version of Facebook for Pete's sake.
 
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Thanks sarlix, you've been very hlepful. I just formatted an empty card and it's finally booted from SD. It's just loading in now. I'm going to do the codec and hotfix again now. Should I still format the other card simply because it won't let the pandora recognise Fennec? If it recognises all the other pnd's it shouldn't need formatting no?
 
ah, so maybe here is the place to write my first impressions mini review....

i received my pandora yesterday and did not have too much time to spend with it. still, I have some quite strong first impressions.

Design: i half expected the pandora to be a brick. surprisingly, it is not - or does not look and feel like one. if you like razorblade apple design, it might not be for you, but it really looks nice to me. it also does not weigh too heavily and it is perfectly comfortable to hold in both hands. well done overall.

Build quality: here, the pandora is definitely lacking. but not as much as i expected. if you don't look at it too closely, you'll almost think it is a polished machine. well, almost since the lid on one side does not close correctly. a 0.5 mm issue, but noticeable. the same is true for the lower edge of the bezel. it is bent outward - again by maybe half a millimeter. also, the shoulder buttons are wobbly and the keyboard has a kind of squishiness that doesn't give you a nice tactile feedback. there are a few more smaller issues like the batery sticker not properly sticking, but as bad as this may sound, these are relatively minor issues and the rest looks solid. it does not feel sloppy like a chinese PMP, it rather feels handmade - which it was :)

Controls: in principle, the controls of the pandora make a good first impression. nubs are perfectly placed, everythink is optimized for thumbtyping. well done. the nubs themselves however are not optimal. the left one has a higher acceleration to the right than to the left. strange. also, in standard xfce setup, the right nub is assigned to "mouse click" which i found suboptimal - but that is a pure software issue. the dpad is good, the abxy pad too. keys are a bit squishy as remarked above and the upper row - the one with the numbers - is really hard to reach. small keys and so close to the hinge.

Hardware: the pandora is fast. that's a subjective first impression of course. websites render as fast as on my pocket pc, and programs load faster. the 0.5GB internal flash disk is not spacious, but it is fast. wifi works nicely, has about the same range as my eeepc and speed is enough to match a 10Mbit DSL connection. the 2 SD card slots are nice but also necessary. because of the small internal flash one SD slot will have to be permanently occupied. also the 2 usb ports are a really nice touch. for now i did not have any issues with the full size one only being hi-speed. The screen is nice, with good angles. It also doesn't feel too crammed. However, it is definitely one notch below the 1024*600 screen un my umid.

Software: the first impression of the os was incredibly polished. but when looking closer you will notice immediately the work in progress nature of it. out of the box you con't even play mp3's for example. the special hardware is nicely integrated - i really liked the special nub setup dialog. also, you can see that this is a hackable machine. e.g., root console is easily reachable. what i had problems with was the strange assignment of the right nub as mouse buttons (and no easy way to e.g. map them to something else). this and tab as fn+space, which is a real pain for the right thumb. oh, and i can't switch the machine off while on the power line. but these are issues that will be easily corrected once i have a bit more time to play with it. the coolest thing about the firmware however is the bootup dialog. this machine is designed to be hackable - a very nice feeling.

so in summary, no, i don't regret having bought it. not even having waited over 1.5 years for it. the SW will have to improve a lot and i will probably spend a lot of time customizing my p. but this is what i was after :) . i would not recommend the pandora to everyone. if you are looking for an out-of-the-box gadget, it will not be for you. but when looking for a pocketable device that you can have full access to and that is above all hackable, the pandora is a very nice option.

edit: oops, i forgot: the battery life is an astonishing 10+ hours in surfing mode. this is really nice.
 
on the subject of regrets - i have none.

i think the nubs issue is just a matter of devs learning how to treat them properly . from what i can see there is still some settling to happen on the software side as expected ..

i only wish there were more active coders pushing stuff as rapidly as possible .. seems to me there are players waiting for the good stuff but maybe the devs dont have their devices yet.

honestly i find the shoulder buttons on my pandoras work just great .. but not in quake3 which is the only graphically interesting game so far ...

i hope we see some innovative homebrew in the coming months anyway ...
 
I'm not going to format those cards as I've just tried Fennec in the freshly formatted one with no joy either. Guess I'll have to install codec and hotfix again, where do I put them again?
 
NickLoTurco said:
I'm not going to format those cards as I've just tried Fennec in the freshly formatted one with no joy either. Guess I'll have to install codec and hotfix again, where do I put them again?
Did you try a fresh download of Fennec, or did you copy it over from the other card?

You should post in that thread in the other section, imo. Every problem should be over there for others to learn and not be scattered around in random threads ;)
 
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DaveC said:
Yeah I wonder what happened to Zod who was going to port the PSX emu? He was all gung ho then got swallowed up with iPhone again never to be heard from.

Nothing happened to him, he is still around and still working on PSX. He will make a release when he is ready. The current version runs in a window and in debug mode and people would just bitch and moan if he released it now. It's such a double edged sword sometimes.
 
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I don't have my Pandora, and I'm hoping I won't have some of the unfortunate hardware issues that some have experienced. However, I think Azure's comments are valid and interesting, because in some sense how can this product live up to all the expectation? It has been fostered by OP and I have no shame in saying that if there's something fundamentally wrong with my Pandora, such as the shoulder buttons, then I'm not going to be too pleased and would expect help from OP in getting it right. I think we all admire what OP's vision is though, and they've brought it through to fruition, that's amazing. Some things therefore will be compromises, but I never thought it'd be compromises on such essentials as the controls.

A majority of the control issues, I hope, appear to be that they need to be "broken in". So if that's the case, it's not an issue. However, poor drilling of the shoulder buttons is not acceptable, it's forgiveable (a mistake) but it has to be rectified for these people.

I'll reserve my own judgements and not just my musings, for when I have it in front of me.
 
craigix said:
DaveC said:
Yeah I wonder what happened to Zod who was going to port the PSX emu? He was all gung ho then got swallowed up with iPhone again never to be heard from.

Nothing happened to him, he is still around and still working on PSX. He will make a release when he is ready. The current version runs in a window and in debug mode and people would just bitch and moan if he released it now. It's such a double edged sword sometimes.
Zodttd is sort of business person, I wouldn't expect anything from him if it doesn't result in big amounts of $$$. He did release the source though, so someone else could do a port (which is the only way I see the release happening really).
 
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notaz said:
craigix said:
DaveC said:
Yeah I wonder what happened to Zod who was going to port the PSX emu? He was all gung ho then got swallowed up with iPhone again never to be heard from.

Nothing happened to him, he is still around and still working on PSX. He will make a release when he is ready. The current version runs in a window and in debug mode and people would just bitch and moan if he released it now. It's such a double edged sword sometimes.
Zodttd is sort of business person, I wouldn't expect anything from him if it doesn't result in big amounts of $$$. He did release the source though, so someone else could do a port (which is the only way I see the release happening really).

What if we gave him some donations? That might persuade him to keep working on it, perhaps?
 
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