Musing About Pandora


Chaser

Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2006
Messages
408
Location
Manchester
Enjoying a cool glass in the sun (yesterday) from my garden, I wrote from serial no 45, that is a thing of sheer beauty, for which I am already smitten. I would give up lent for this and happily do bird to protect it from muggers, which was a unique selling point for me, as carrying a laptop bag round Manchester paints something of a target lol

My postman was greeted by my wife, luckily for him & he scarpered prior to a sexual assault seeing pandora splashed upon the tabloids. Would have made good publicity perhaps? So maybe a campaign of ´hug the postie´ could do likewise and spread the logos with community spirit and nothing more nasty!

THE MYTHICAL BOX OF FUN

Well this box of tricks is sexy for starters! Sure people on forums have called her fugly but they dont get her charms, still wear their fig leaves and are still entranced by the forked tongued salesmen offering his oily apples. IBM will eventually take them where they want to go via a telepathy rfid implant, to allow them to think they are in control of their controlless digital angels!

They are welcome to their blinkered view, as I am enjoying the garden to its fullest, however sinful that maybe.

CURVES

First off, I checked off the build quality and nothing is found wanting in my case.

I have shown her to some others, who have never heard of the project and they would have had no idea it was not a mainstream MP product. They also instantly wanted one and regarded a £200 plus price tag a non sequitur, in relation to such a product. A chap up the road that deals in various electrical products of probably prior owners misfortune, was also stunned by her and I´ll be lucky to keep mine a week or two by my reckoning, as I was offerred a considerable sum and must watch my back! Pandoranoia is setting in. Get a number and get in line!

I appear to have a unit of superb quallity. Beavis n co agree!

I have no squeeky or disfunctional keys and the key mat is high quality and pleasant to type with. a little slower than normal and via a different layout, that is rapidly becoming second nature in that I can sometimes touch type already. The layout is a compromise of community input, so you had your time to be creative or bitch about it already!

It does have a glossy finish, that can render it hard to spot the printing in some light conditions but it is very nice regardless.

Future versions in matte, or perhaps backlightable (blue leds are the new alloy rims for those night moths I guess?) would make for a nice Pandora mk2 ( with beefed up hardware). Hopefully available in around ´two months´, once you guys recoup some much deseved funds and more importantly can get some sleep following the birth of your baby. Mommy was a naughty girl!

The nubs appear to work fine, no grinding, looseness etc. Responsive and a very different feel to what I was expecting and welcome none the less. As a custom job, they are to be proud of. Once assigned to mouse functions via the menu, they seem fine for OS funtions. though admittedly I have yet to try gaming with them, as I am in a similar position to Puppydee, in that my main pc gfx card has gone south and I must now hook up a ton of hdd´s externally, to find the files stored for the Pandora.

The NES emu gpfce is the sole emu I have run so far, and even in a first release lacking sound in my case, it was a joy to dabble with and to see a friend of my wife, totally stunned that super mario 2 could be pocketable in a format she recognised instant versatilty from. Kids educational tool for school, pocket pc everything, power office tool, gaming childhood heaven and she even loved the open nature of the project, and the fact it´s under your control and not the companies! You may have a winner of a cross over machine to the mainstream, if it can be marketed to reach the masses.

She felt the build quality was superb, the hinge is way better than a DS and the stylus and its holder also. It´s a nicer size than those smaller consoles and no cramp results. I find the hinge can sit at various positions for touch useage aswell, just dont go all Ip Man at it.

Pandorapanic & Battlejewels was all she had time for but she loved them, as do I. My six year old son is not so keen but i´ll get back to that.

The screen is lovely, calibrate it first thing and it´s very responsive and accurate, via a quality stylus that really does lock away well, or via touch, though the resolution means you need small fingers.

As a linux newb, the OS has been fine. Sure I am not trying anything fancy but as an end user it is perfectly acceptable and I look forward to testing others as they are developed by people outhere. The PND system (pronounced however ) is very neat and keeps things categorised nicely. Media playback for most files is good and will no doubt improve in formats possible etc. Speakers are crisp but I was perhaps hoping for slightly more oomph but its way louder than a gp2x.

Boot time for me appears just 17 seconds to get to the password entry screen. which I must disable. Booting into mmenu takes about four seconds from xfce and is a very smooth interface that even craigs hat does indeed deserve a tip towards.

Once I get n64 running, refind my old psx rips (emu soon enough) and roms for a multitude of systems, I´llrelive heavy on the magic, snatcher, the magic knight series, knightlore, konami aliens, exciting hour and much more upon the move as a very happy guy.

Until then I shall leave you with the appropriate words of my gaming guru six yr old autistic son upon hearing my pandora was due to be delivered......”I hate it !”.... “Why?”....”Because it is a laptop like daddies; that plays all those games and because and mostly because, I haven´t got one !”

Sole faults:

Screen is difficult to see in some lights. Reposition your self Doh!

If I was super anal, I would own a micrometer to test the gap between the lid on the left and right sides when it is closed\in my pocket about town\sat charging i.e when it doesn´t matter!

I have a mm of bowing on the right side of the screen, where a clip has not fully seated.
I have a mm of bowing centrally upon the base of the screen´s bezel.

My friends could not notice such minor blemishes upon a breath taking product. I doubt that many laymen would either.

My wifi drops out with the flaky regularity of my own ISP & BT connection, long overdue testing and replacement as it behaves like ISDN. Sadly the terminal command of “sudo ifconfig usb0 down" does not fix this feature and a restart is required (just toggle wifi, thanks ED :) )

I thought I had a charging issue but the plug to the right sorted that but after an overnight charge I was still at 10%, leading to more pandoranoia. Yet a reboot off the charger, led to a correct battery reading, so perhaps there is a slight bug in software regarding updating the charge level or perhaps she had crashed.

To conclude I am very impressed and hope the team make a mint in future with the next batches and a poss mkII in future. A remarkeable achievement now into the hands of a talented community that are already providing impressive software to boot. Many thanks to all the team and the devs :)

I´ll make videos if any demand but Ijve limited software until I reclaim it.
 
Chaser said:
My wifi drops out with the flaky regularity of my own ISP & BT connection, long overdue testing and replacement as it behaves like ISDN. Sadly the terminal command of “sudo ifconfig usb0 down" does not fix this feature and a restart is required (just toggle wifi, thanks ED :) )
the "ifconfig usb0 down" is for a different problem unrelated to the disconnect problem.
This's a bug in the network manager and is well known across all Linux. There's a few hacks for different distros, but as far as I'm aware nothing in baseline that fixes it yet, but hopefully soon. Maybe. In 2 months. :p
You shouldn't need to restart though, simply disable and re-enable the wifi: it's in the system settings somewhere, someone who actually has their Pandora should be able to tell you exactly how to do it.
 
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Are you a journalist by any chance? The way you write, I get that vibe.
:)
 
Thanks for the feedback folks, I am pleased you didn't mind the rant to much.

@mindlord : Smiling with me I hope sir? But's its the interweb thing, so I'll survive if not :)

@Sebt3: No problem you are welcome. It seemed with the distinct lack of reviews, that I should post something in comunity spirit, as there was one around here that led to the thing at one point.

@wizardstan : I wasn't clear enough in my rambling but yes, the wifi issue is sorted by ED's suggestion of toggling the wifi from the menu, as you say. I guess if it is Linux (Linus/Laynux) wide then my sugestion of a simple script, to 'toggle and fix it via an icon' is as laugh worthy as I imagine it maybe! Cheers for your helpful response though and I hope you love your pandora as much as I do, as limited as my skills to utilitise its potential is.

@SomeGuy99: If you mean do I write for nudie mags or Literotica then perhaps, but if you mean I really am in the gutter and write for anything else then your (best verbalised 'Van Der Merwe' style) PND files are in a twist sir, as pure 'Pr0n/prawnage'!

@Alpha2: Give it some time and before they are eighteen, I am sure you'll have your Pandora and will have not missed the good parts of the wait and its maturity.
 
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