Help Needed Replicating Success Of Openpandora For A Netbook/laptop


Cracker Jacker said:
WizardStan said:
That doesn't answer the question. Are you saying, with absolute confidence, that I am a liar?

It actually does answer your question. I don't know who or what you are. I can't make any statment, with any degree of confidence, about your intentions or trustability.
No it doesn't answer the question. It is a yes or no question. I have said I have held a Pandora. Do you believe me, or do you think I am lying?
 
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WizardStan said:
No it doesn't answer the question. It is a yes or no question. I have said I have held a Pandora. Do you believe me, or do you think I am lying?
ROFL I couldn't say. I can say that I don't beleive the world is Black & White. I am taking you at your word with a health dose of salt.
 
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Cracker Jacker said:
WizardStan said:
No it doesn't answer the question. It is a yes or no question. I have said I have held a Pandora. Do you believe me, or do you think I am lying?
ROFL I couldn't say. I can say that I don't beleive the world is Black & White. I am taking you at your word with a health dose of salt.
You have said with absolute conviction that the Pandora is a hoax, but can't say that I'm lying when I say I've held one? These statements are not mutually exclusive. Either you believe the Pandora is a scam and that I'm in on it and lying to everyone about it, or you admit that there's a chance, no matter how small it needs to be, that I am telling the truth, the Pandora exists, and you are wrong.
 
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mali said:
I think it might be the lack of new info what's driving some of you to post. Just a question: Do you realize that you are feeding a troll and at the same time pollute a thread that was interesting before? Just a thought, step back and think before posting ;)

edit:
Ninja'd... more or less.

+1 enough said
 
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WizardStan said:
You have said with absolute conviction that the Pandora is a hoax, but can't say that I'm lying when I say I've held one? These statements are not mutually exclusive. Either you believe the Pandora is a scam and that I'm in on it and lying to everyone about it, or you admit that there's a chance, no matter how small it needs to be, that I am telling the truth, the Pandora exists, and you are wrong.

I have not stated anything with absolute conviction. I don't beleive in absolutes. Yes, there is a chance that Pandora will exist. There is a chance that this whole project was just a very poorly executed, but well meaning, attempt to bring some joy to sheeple's lives. There is a chance, but it's a damn slim one.

@WizardStan, your a very flappable thing.
 
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It would have to have a good battery life, I think a 7 inch screen would be fine if that could save it power. Netbooks aren't about screen size anyway, right?
 
Cracker Jacker said:
I have not stated anything with absolute conviction. I don't beleive in absolutes. Yes, there is a chance that Pandora will exist. There is a chance that this whole project was just a very poorly executed, but well meaning, attempt to bring some joy to sheeple's lives. There is a chance, but it's a damn slim one.
Nope, you were pretty clear. You even compared it to a ponzi scheme. There wasn't any hesitation or deviation in your posts, you made it quite clear you believed the Pandora to be a scam.

Cracker Jacker said:
@WizardStan, your a very flappable thing.
Not so flappable, I just don't like being called a liar, and I don't like hypocrites that can't decide what they believe.

My points been made, I think I'm done. Sorry guys, I needed to reach the conclusion of that, I won't drag it out any further. :)
 
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i would like to see an 10" ARM-Netbook. maybe with 8-10 hours of battery life (should be possible at that size of the case)
...also hw h264 acceleration would be cool for watching movies.
 
WizardStan said:
Nope, you were pretty clear. You even compared it to a ponzi scheme. There wasn't any hesitation or deviation in your posts, you made it quite clear you believed the Pandora to be a scam.

Consistency in thought does not denote an absolute beleif. Comparing and contrasting are effective techniques of communication.

Not so flappable, I just don't like being called a liar, and I don't like hypocrites that can't decide what they believe.
Please state the nature of the hypocrisy. I don't have enough information to come to a conclusion as to what the OP team is actually doing. I am not alone in this position. Clearly the debacle that occurred early on with the payment-refund-repay another way is evidence of that. The OP team was clearly challenged with the presentation of their endeavor to banks and credit card companies. To this day, those same entities have yet to come on board with the project. Why should I be so much easier to sway? Why should you?

Mmm Mmmm mmmm. Goat meat. Gotta love it.
 
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LeChuck87 said:
i would like to see an 10" ARM-Netbook. maybe with 8-10 hours of battery life (should be possible at that size of the case)
...also hw h264 acceleration would be cool for watching movies.

Maybe an integrated web cam? This is the only thing I wish the Pandora had. I know it's not very practical to have a camera on a screen that size, but it would be so cool! I'll just get a USB web cam.
 
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Kangal said:
I dont know what the (additional?) internal USB ports would be used for, Hard drive?

That's one of the "beauties" of a relatively standardised interface - it could be almost anything. A memory-based thumb drive, a GPS unit, perhaps an accelerometer of some sort? External USBs are great, but the ability to tuck something effectively inside the unit, protected by the netbook/notebook case, should reduce the "But it doesn't have..." aspect, at least a little. External USB sticks are not very mobile-friendly IMHO. Presumably even USB wireless joypads could benefit, though they would be less likely than GPS I reckon. The mor ethe unit has built in (Bluetooth AND Wifi AND 3G AND GPS AND...) the less useful an internal USB port would be.
 
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Monk said:
Kangal said:
I dont know what the (additional?) internal USB ports would be used for, Hard drive?

That's one of the "beauties" of a relatively standardised interface - it could be almost anything. A memory-based thumb drive, a GPS unit, perhaps an accelerometer of some sort? External USBs are great, but the ability to tuck something effectively inside the unit, protected by the netbook/notebook case, should reduce the "But it doesn't have..." aspect, at least a little. External USB sticks are not very mobile-friendly IMHO. Presumably even USB wireless joypads could benefit, though they would be less likely than GPS I reckon. The mor ethe unit has built in (Bluetooth AND Wifi AND 3G AND GPS AND...) the less useful an internal USB port would be.

You know I wanted a wireless Bluetooth keyboard, (flexible so I could take it to school in my backpack) but the ones I found were like $100. It was very disappointing.
 
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XxionxX said:
You know I wanted a wireless Bluetooth keyboard, (flexible so I could take it to school in my backpack) but the ones I found were like $100. It was very disappointing.

Neither surprises me - they sound like really appealing things and really appealing things tend to have a premium put on them. If not price, then something else (like delay...).

A query for the OP. I've been reluctant to ask this for fear of being howled at, but it keep pressing on me.

You would like to replicate the success of OpenPandora for a netbook/laptop. I can see worthy aspects to that but something nags me. OpenPandora have yet, as I understand it, to have fulfilled a single order. Is "collecting the money" the success that you wish to replicate? If not that, what EXACTLY? If that (as this seems to be the only complete success tha tOpenPandora have achieved to date) how do you see the rest of your project emulating or being different to the OpenPandora one? I speak as an early Pandora pre-orderer who has yet to see a package of any sort and who sees the goal-posts seemingly moved on a bi-monthly basis, both for target delivery date and for what will actually be delivered to me (e.g. I ordered TV cable and carry case and provided a dev fund donation). I'm just trying to look at what customer experience you are looking to provide, as well as the technical specs of the netbook/notebook/laptop/whatever.
 
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My main wants in a netbook are rather simple.

I would describe my ideal one as "cheap and cheerful".

* 9inch or larger screen. Should be to the edges of the laptop 'lid' not like my friends EEEpc which has 2inches of room either side of his screen. Just looks cheap. (It is cheap but it isnt cheerful!)
* A good keyboard. Not just good, damn good. Maybe leave out the touch pad to enable larger keys (see next point). I want to write/code/forum on it.
* Integrated trackball or pointer. I hate touchpads. The laptop I am typing on now has one. I loathe them. They take up lots of space.. Get rid of it and put a trackball or similar somewhere above/below/left/right of the keyboard. An old Toshiba laptop I had about 14 years ago had an integrated trackball, it was robust and accurate. Also perhaps an integrated scroll wheel somewhere.
* Use Standard hardware. I would like to install whatever distro of *nix I want. Preferably with well supported hardware.
* USB/SD slots/rj45/Headphone jack/tv out(svideo is fine)/simple integrated speaker/Wireless
* No touch screen. Will make it to expensive for my purposes. I wouldn't use it anyway, not on this lil guy.
* Sturdy > Light. Durable > Pretty. Functional > Aesthetics.
 
I like wishlists :)

10" screen, I don't find anything less that usable. Higher than usual 1024x600 netbook resolution would be good.
As close to full-size keyboard as possible.
Like nikudorei said, no touchpad. A Thinkpad style nipple mouse would be perfect.
Well built.
 
hi folks, thank you to everyone who's posted, i was caught a little by surprise at the enthusiasm which is a good sign. so, let me go over things i've seen:

1) a trouble-maker who thinks that the openpandora is a scam. greaat! healthy scepticism. it's why i'm a) contacting other highly respected free software community representatives, to ask _them_ if they would like to be the treasurers b ) endeavouring to reach the OP shop owners to see if they would like to be the ones to take pre-orders etc. i was expecting the reputation of the respected free software community representatives to be "good enough to trust", and i'm actually glad to see that someone spelled out to mr troll that in fact the OP shop owners are considered likewise highly reputable. oh, and reminded people that we know where they live :)

2) someone wanted 3D graphics. there are three ARM SoC CPUs that meet the criteria: a) the NVidia Tegra b ) the OMAP3530 c) the Samsung ARM11 S3C6410 d) four. the fouur ARM CPUs ("nooobody expects the spanish inquisition") d) the Samsung Cortex S5PC100. of these, the Tegra is out the window because Nvidia are such f****rs on NDAs and refuse to recognise the free software community, i cannot encourage such corporate stupidity so their CPU is out, and that's the end of it (if that's not ok, please phone nvidia and get them to change their corporate policy: ask them to release all documentation on nvidia products so that free software developers can write drivers _without_ having to waste vast amounts of time on reverse-engineering). the OMAP3530 is great - but it is truly dreadfully expensive in comparison, you _really_ have to have a good reason to use OMAPs as you pay through the nose for the DSP. the S3C6410 is great - it supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and there's even a free software linux kernel driver, but the DDR1 RAM and the ARM11 architecture kill it for all but "embedded" roles... and that leaves the 833mhz or the 1ghz S5PC100. the 833mhz version also supports OpenGL ES 2.0, and is $14.50 in 1k volumes according to ebv.com, which is *under half* the price of the 600mhz OMAP3530 and only 28% of the OMAP3530 720mhz price! in my mind, it's going to be truly hard to beat that for at least the next eight to twelve months until Cortex A9 and A5 CPUs start vaguely coming out.

3) screens: it looks like there's going to be a big push to replace the truly dreadful 1024 x 600 10.1in LCD with a slightly-more-tolerable 1200 x 720 in netbooks. i anticipate that this will be only slightly more than the $32 mass-volume price of the current 1024 x 600 10.1in, and am asking a samsung supplier for info. by the time you get up to 1280 x 768 11.1in i am guessing that you'll be looking at around $70 (ridiculous, isn't it...) and about 4 to 5 watts. i _really_ want to try to avoid the circuitry required for a Charge-Coupled Fluorescent Light (CCFL) you need an inverter circuit which generates 700 to 1,500 volts it's just madness, so am going to try hard to find LED backlit screens. i do have to warn you, though: don't be surprised if some of the 12in or better options turn out to be $200+ especially at the higher resolutions. the prices on ebay, esp. for items sold direct from china or hong kong, aren't _that_ far off the 1k volume prices (10-15% or so)

4) keyboard, mouse - reliability seems to be key, not price. perhaps unsurprisingly :)

5) SATA. if you do a search for SATA controllers (google "SATA PHY IC") you find a ton of references to forums where people have been looking for _years_ for SATA controllers esp. ones to connect to FPGAs. there are two ICs which come up: one is from ATMEL and is 1.5gbps and the other is by Marvell and is 3.0gbps. the trouble with these ICs is that if you order a million, they fire up a special run, just for you, no problem. everyone else can simply get stuffed, as far as they're concerned. so, some embedded systems engineers simply write their own SATA controllers, as an FPGA or using a low-speed CPU! it has to be said though: even 1.5gbps is 187mbytes per second; 3gbps is 375mbytes/sec... running an ARM CPU's General-Purpose Memory Bus at up to 375mbytes/sec when the CPU is 833mhz or 1ghz? mmm... there had _better_ be a DMA engine handling the data transfers, that's all i can say about that. but - i quite like the idea floated by michelle (an embedded designer) of using a general-purpose 75mhz 8051 CPU with lots of GPIO and an on-board 32k PROM, and implementing SATA or even PATA in assembler! that would be just absolutely wicked (and probably a lot cheaper than asking IC manufacturers to fire up the boilers just for us). it will take quite a bit of research, but it's such a cool idea that it just has to be investigated :)

lastly: i've begun writing the survey, i dragged my questionnaire software out, last seen in 2004, and managed to give it the kiss of life. i'm trying to remember how to use its archaic admin interface (which i wrote!) and have begun filling out questions. it'll be quite a comprehensive survey, because the questionnaire software is designed to be flexible and allow complex formulae and calculations to be carried out behind-the-scenes (python code fragments - stored in the database and executed on-demand!)

the point is to gather as much useful information as possible, then advise people along the way of the estimated costs involved in their decisions. that's what this questionnaire software excels at. then, i will begin to create some reports and statistics about the number of people who want particular configurations, and those results will be fed _back_ into the system to augment peoples' individual reports. 's'all very clevvah :)

the end result will be that people will know when certain critical threshold points have been reached and we can send out messages like, "congratulations - 1000 people want the same thing that you do; you said you'd be willing to pay for this type of configuration, now you can commit to that, as long as they all do as well. hurrah!"

ok enough.
 
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