New Blog Post!


Chairman_Now said:
EvilDragon said:
And what unauthorised loan? You paid for the device, we clearly said that the money will be used to actually produce the Pandora and you could always cancel your order.
There was nothing unauthorised.
There were some people who did cancel their order and they got their money back.

<LONG RANT OMITTED, OUTRAGE ON MANY POINTS>

The first batch is mainly for fans of homebrew and opensource, geeks and similar folks who don't care if the software doesn't run 100% from the beginning.
The hardware will be fine, we fixed everything up, so there's no problem anymore.

<MORE LONG RANT OMITTED>

Mr. Dragon, I know that you've worked very hard for this project, and I appreciate your dedication and efforts. But please be realistic about the expectations and perception of your clients, or at least, some of your clients...

You _have_ gotten a 1.5 year loan from your early adopters. Just accept it and admit it for what it is. Most of the pre-orderers have shown unbelievable patience and understanding regarding this "loan" - but really, it has been a very long time, and many broken promises. Don't be surprised when someone posts a public cancellation.

Most of all, please don't get all revisionist about who the intended audience is or was. I can't find anything about the unit being "mainly for fans of homebrew and opensource... who don't care if the software doesn't run 100% from the beginning" in any of your press, or anywhere on the promotional website (the English language one, at any rate). It wasn't sold to me that way, although I did understand that this was a large part of the early audience. And I really don't want to hear the glib crap about buying an Apple product, or hearing about other products that shipped broken. I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into, and I still think that this entire process was totally messed up.

Just be pleased that enough people supported you above and beyond to get the Pandora off the ground, should it ever ship. I'm an early pre-orderer (first day), I'm hanging in, but I'm still not convinced that this thing will ever ship, or ever ship while it is still relevant.


strong post my friend, but I think evil dragon is just a little out of it, with almost everything finish I think the poor guy is just stressed up the a** if you know what i mean, Pandora is come, I envy you my friend for being Day one preorder, thats some big ballz you got there O___o
 
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Dannyxzero said:
strong post my friend, but I think evil dragon is just a little out of it, with almost everything finish I think the poor guy is just stressed up the a** if you know what i mean, Pandora is come, I envy you my friend for being Day one preorder, thats some big ballz you got there O___o

Aw shucks, thanks ;)

Again, EvilDragon's dedication and efforts are admirable. But seriously, ED - stop arguing with someone that DID help finance this project, stop irritating people that haven't canceled, and just ship the damned product already.
 
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chole said:
Arora doesn't use Firefox's rendering engine. It uses Qt's html rendering engine, which is Webkit, the one used by Midori, Safari, Google Chrome, Epiphany, and optionally Konqueror. It does seem quite good, though the build that I installed at home and at work both seem to have problematic session restoring (that is, it's not working at all, but that might not be a problem with the app in general, just on my distro or something).
Yeah, Arora is WebKit-based, though apparently the Qt port of WebKit (Arora) is more stable than whatever GTK+ port Midori was using.
On mine, session restore works fine, which is good because it likes to crash once or twice a day. I heard they had a privacy mode as well, but I guess it didn't work and was removed for the time being.
I'm running Arch x64 and using arora-git, so mine should be built from recent source.

It's a really good browser, but I wish it had a porn mode...
 
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Triumvir said:
There's no doubt about it that everybody who has contributed to make the Pandora what it is has done an absolutely fantastic job. Honestly, you are all crazy for taking on such an immense project. Hats off to all of you for bringing such a unique product to the market. It may be for a niche market, but in the eyes of that niche market this device is absolutely brilliant! It looks amazing, keep up the great work and don't let the stray negative comment get to you.

For kicks though - I have a Motorola Milestone, which I believe runs on an OMAP3, the processor is clocked to 550MHz. I'd be more than happy to put some WiFi strain on it and post what kind of speed it peaks/averages at over a local network. That might help put some perspective on the matter.

Take 'er easy!


For anybody interested in the second part of that post, my Milestone is pushing around 8.35(±0.15) mbit/s stable over the course of transferring a 1.46 GByte file over a local 802.11g network, peaking shortly to 8.70(±0.10) mbit/s at the beginning of the transfer. (See: -Picture-)

This seems fairly consistent with what the Pandora is currently reaching and striving towards. I think a lot of people need to relax about the whole WiFi 'issue'.

Hopefully the comparison will put some peoples mind at ease about the whole dealio.

Take 'er easy!
 
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Thanks to MWeston for the post that has made me feel much better (though I'd still like to know if they'll be painted or not). Seriously appreciated.

Now...I am getting tired of the "go get an iPhone" type excuses. I HAVE a goddamned iPhone, PSP, DS, and anything else you can name in a similar vein. And guess what? They aren't a pandora. Just because someone's not perfectly happy with something doesn't mean they should fuck off and buy something else, and a lot of us have been waiting a very long time besides. (This isn't directed straight at ED, I'm just generally sick of it)

And, to ED: We love you, we really do, so please know I say this only meaning well (and because I'm worried about ya). I think you need to take a break for a little bit; it seems like all the expectations are getting to be too much pressure. I don't think replying to Monk's post like that was really a good choice, especially after he had calmed down. I'm not mad at you at all because I can tell it's the stress; I hope stuff can start going right soon so you can feel better. And maybe taking turns with someone for blog posts would be a good idea so that it's not all your responsibility (which is probably the culprit of much of said stress).
 
MWeston said:
The parts from Texas are in the air already and they are going to England. The cases will be shipped on Saturday April 17th (unpainted) or on Tuesday April 20th (painted). Silk screening would mean shipping them on Friday April 23rd and we saw more samples that were a bit better but still not great. Why is that so hard to do? Why haven't they made thousands yet? It baffles me too but from what I hear, they know we are unhappy and keep trying to impress us to no end...and it isn't happening although I have to say seeing the painted cases was the first time I started to feel like this could actually work. I'm pretty picky and perhaps more so than many forumers but I just want a professional product. We'll see what we get in the end. We actually never asked them to keep trying things like they have done. They've just sort of forced that on us by never having anything ready to ship.

MWeston - Three things
1) Before the others comments, I appreciate your update, and all of the info. Thank you.

2) You say to add on the silk screen would only delay by three additional days? I'm very confused by this. Previously, we were told that we were skipping the silkscreening because it would have to be shipped to another location, screened, and shipped back, which you estimated would take on the order of a month. That's not the situation anymore? What happened?

I don't want to bring up the issue of *whether* we should print silkscreens on the device again (I'm not even going to say my opinion), since I think most have accepted the fact (or are happy with it). But I would like to know how it changed again.

Also, is the "we saw more samples that were a bit better, bt still not great" in reference to the screening, or the cases themselves?

3) You say you never asked them to keep trying things, and this confuses me. I was under the impression that "Since board production had been stopped for a while, we allowed the Chinese guys to tweak the case moulds a bit more." (ED, blog post, Back on track). I'll take you at your word - was this again a miscommunication in blog posting? I'd just like it cleared up.



jumpman said:
I would like to comment on what I have read. Once again the mould factory boggles the mind. Am I missing something here, and maybe a team member will explain in better details, but how do we go from shipping a 1000 units on or around the 26th of last month, to now still waiting until the 17th or the 20th for what I'm guessing is still just 1000 cases? Did they throw out the ones from that early batch(whos paying for all these mistakes and revisions?) Most of the information you guys give, I can read inbetween the lines and form a decent opinion, but the mould factory news never ever makes any logical sense! From what I have read from Michael, the team is having a similar problem, which at this point really has to be addressed in my opinion. There is NO WAY THE TEAM WILL EVER MAKE THIS PROJECT PROFITABLE DEALING WITH THIS CURRENT MOULD FACTORY AND THIS CURRENT STATE OF COMMUNICATIONS!

I say ship the first 1000 cases UNPAINTED, because there is NO WAY IN HELL those guys are going to paint a thousand units properly in 4 days time. That is impossible, and if anyone believes they can, they have not been watching the same comedy/drama/reality television that I have for the last 2 years. And if they do paint them in 4 days, the quality will be SHIT! If by some miracle they actually ship some cases within the next month, I see the remaining 3000 cases taking until Christmas to finally ship.


I heartily second this. I also second the question, which seems to be unanswered. Will the case company still only be doing the first 1000 after we get the info about painted/non-paited? Or does OPT like it enough (assuming we trust them to tell us it fits) to do all 10,000 at once?

I'll also ask, for my own curiosity, how many actual MP cases they've made so far. I guess if the paint is just a finish they can apply, it's not as big a deal, but they told us they were going to run off a lot, then they go and make more tweaks. If they ran any significant number that aren't going use, does OPT get charged for them?


Monk said:
Not a problem. Normally I'd be quite happy to argue with you about the pros and cons of a patch resistor on all of the first and second (and third?) batches, and why I feel the paint job to be a cover up, but I don't think today is the day for it. It's tomorrow here already, and I should be sleeping this off :)

Monk - I value your opinion, and I would definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts on this when you feel more up to it. And no, I'm not being sarcastic.
 
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Chairman_Now said:
Most of all, please don't get all revisionist about who the intended audience is or was. I can't find anything about the unit being "mainly for fans of homebrew and opensource... who don't care if the software doesn't run 100% from the beginning" in any of your press, or anywhere on the promotional website (the English language one, at any rate). It wasn't sold to me that way ...
It's not revisionist. It was aimed at users of this forum, plain and simple. It took off from there without any advertising or PR. We (forum users) spent the following year explaining to newcomers that it was a homebrew device, not polished like an iPhone, etc. In fact the standard answer to the endless "is this device for me?" posts in 2009 was that the first batch OS would pretty much be in beta.

Over time the OS has come in leaps and bounds, and perhaps we haven't been as compelled to push that advice. But that's how it was sold here on the forums, by OPT and GP32X members, as I remember it. How it was sold by Engadget or other sites might be was a different story. ;)
 
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I still consider my payment a donation to the project, which gets me a Pandora if it ever gets done (and I'm confident it will!). I'm all for creating products that we the people want instead of what some corporations want us to buy. I for one want to promote gadgets that allow me to do with them as I please without jailbreaking or cracking or breaching EULAs. I'm sure I'll be very happy when I get my pandora, but this project for me is more about ideology and principle than just buying a product. I'm thrilled that a few people with little-to-none commercial backing can create something like this in today's corporate-owned world. Sometimes it makes me sad when people treat the OPT like they were a multi-million company. They're just some dudes from a forum who decided to put themselves on the line to create something we all want. Expecting them to do it like a professional experienced corporation is a little much in my opinion. They are doing a great job regarding the level of their experience. Frankly, I didn't expect anything like we're getting in terms of (percievable, judging by photos, reports and eyewitness statements) quality and finish.

I have to say, while all of the above is true, I still get knocked back a bit every time there's a new delay. Still, I rather being kept in the loop even if the news are bad. Thanks for keeping us informed about all the bumps and blockades even when it means taking some flak.

I know many people would not agree with me on many of the points above. This is, however, how I feel. With all the negative posts lately I thought I needed to voice my opinion as well. Keep up the good work OPT, you'll get there! We've still got your back :)
 
The main reason why I think the Pandora will be awesome and will stay awesome for 5 years or more is that even after 2 years of waiting (first-day preorder :D ) a comparable or better device has yet to appear or even to be announced (Pocketable, Linux(see below), Keyboard... Nokia N900 and that's lacking USB and costs twice as much).

Also it runs a non-crippled Linux (Yes, I'm looking at you, Android!) with just about all the software I use on my desktop (Software that I've been using for about 5 years on Linux and about 3 years on this machine, so I don't think I'll have to replace the Pandora in the near future because I suddenly need more software. (Okay, maybe I'll miss the arduino IDE which seems to be X86-only due to Java... But there's always Python.)

Plus I doubt the industry will drop USB2.0 backwards compatibility in the next 5 years, so I can always extend the Pandora in case of new developments.

*Sits back and happily awaits the arrival of his noodly master the box* (Actually I do both, but the latter seems more likely)
 
I love how people say "just ship them" as if there's like 15000 of them just sitting out back by the bike shed that they were just saving for a rainy day or something. Only revisionist comments I ever see are by people that have like a dozen posts and only know about the Pandora because of Endgaget as opposed to people who've been watching the project evolve since the GP32 days. Sure it's taking a long time to come to the end of the trip but really it only seems like it's being dragged out because so few consumer devices ever offer people the opportunity to see the thing being brought into the world from such an early stage. Most people never see a PSP or slimline Playstation before the thing has been in development 2 year prior. The growing pains those devices must have suffered in comparison must be psychotic but dulled ever so much but the wads of cash that can be used to fix issues in under a week.

The development and handling of the money for this device may be unlike any other consumer device but it also has a origin unlike any of those consumer devices. Doesnt excuse the lateness by any means but it should be a factor in understanding why it's not sitting on our tables right now rather than making unreasonable demands about making things happen that don't always have anything to do with a foreseeable situation. Not Directed at anyone in particular, it's just tiring seeing the same complaints a year later when people have had ample opportunity to back out even when they knew it wasnt going to be ready by the originally suggested date.
 
Monk said:
You have convinced me. I'll tell the wife to cancel our Pandora order the moment she gets home.

:(

See you in the 2nd batch, hopefully.
 
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Another common theme throughout these posts is people being sympathetic about the money the team have put up front. One thing to remember is that the team have had our cash for 18 months now, and even with todays poor interest rates must easily have gained 10-20 grand on the cash that has been sitting around. Also it was their decision, no one forced them to do this project.
 
^ Not trying to be argumentative, but I don't see how they could have earned much interest on that money. It was used to build the first batch, and it wasn't enough - they had to put thousands of their own dollars/pounds/euros in too. I guess parts of it would have sat there for a while before bills were paid, but if they were able to leave it sitting in the bank all this time, they would never have needed preorders in the first place, would they? :)
 
jake52 said:
Another common theme throughout these posts is people being sympathetic about the money the team have put up front. One thing to remember is that the team have had our cash for 18 months now, and even with todays poor interest rates must easily have gained 10-20 grand on the cash that has been sitting around. Also it was their decision, no one forced them to do this project.

Bear in mind though that people will think twice about per-ordering Pandora 2 - or Phoenix as I think it should be called :) . It was never in the OPT plan to hold customers money this long intentionally.

My understanding was that the Pandora would be profitable enough to fund some kind inital dev/production of the next model ? I'm sure I read that some time ago ? With the tortured birth that may have changed.
 
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So. I've been a long-time supporter of the project. (I will state here that this is NOT a cancellation notice - those two sentences do seem to foreshadow a highly negative post though.) I am a day one preorderer, and am still looking forward to the Pandora. While there have been many delays lately, and lots of negativity here on the forums, I feel that many people are starting to lose perspective.

  1. The first thing I'd like to discuss is how everyone keeps criticizing the OP team for not "acknowledging" the fact that the preorders were really just loans. To quote Chairman_Now: "stop arguing with someone that DID help finance this project". The first place where people are losing perspective is that they forget that their financial contribution to the project pales in comparison to the financial contributions from the team members. As far as I can tell, the $330 that we each paid for the Pandora (give or take based on currency fluctuation and extras) mostly just covers the cost of the materials. The R&D costs are massive, I'm sure, and that's getting split between what, 4 people? Not to mention that most of the financial weight is falling on Craig's shoulders, if I remember correctly. That in mind, saying that things along the lines of "I'm a paying customer, so I should have a say in the matter" is a bit self-serving. If you say that, you're effectively placing yourself as a shareholder in the OpenPandora corporation. In a corporation like that, opinions are weighted by financial involvement. Therefore, it's unlikely that even all 4000 "investors" combined have as much of a say in how the "corporation" runs as do the members of the team combined. I don't know about you guys, but I'm grateful that such a small fry like me might actually be able to have a say in how this device turns out.
  2. Another place where people have lost perspective is on the matter of delays. Do you guys really think that the delays aren't hurting the team as much as they are hurting us? Think about it this way - every day that the project is delayed, more people cancel. If these spots don't get filled (hypothetically), the team loses more money. If the delays get so bad that we reach critical cancellation mass and the project collapses, the team goes bankrupt. Kaput. They're financially FUCKED. From a mathematical perspective, this essentially means that every day they don't ship, they're losing money. I'm sure they're not stringing us along to turn it into a drinking game.
  3. The most recent place where people have lost perspective is on this last blog post. I didn't read it until both it and the clarification post were online, so I am not as enraged as many of you are, having read the first post without the context of the second. I suggest that all of you go back, clear your minds to the absolute best of your ability, and read the two blog posts along with the other posts that MWeston made in this thread. Hopefully you'll reconsider. I read through the whole of this thread before replying, and to me, things don't look _that_ bad (no worse than they've been, I suppose). The issue of painting is something that I agree should be reconsidered (there's no way you guys can possibly ensure that painting will cause problems - might as well just send it out unpainted and post a nice how-to guide on how people can do it themselves if they choose). The rest of it is looking good though - everything except for the cases is either packaged and ready to ship or already has shipped, the keymats are done (according to the status page), the WiFi problem has likely been fixed (my guess is that it's now just CPU limited - MWeston, if you're reading this: have you tried doing transfer tests at different clock speeds to see if the CPU is the bottleneck?), etc. As has been said about this project more times than we can count - we're close to the end. Yes, there are still cases to deal with. Yes, that could take forever (literally). Despite that, I have confidence in the OP team to get this finalized and in our hands.

If you bothered to read all of that, thank you. If not, so be it. Hopefully this'll get people to calm down a bit - in all likelihood, nobody'll give two shits about what I wrote. I'd just like to have some sane, calm, thoughtful, and productive discussions here.

P.S.: Monk, please don't make any decisions that you'll regret. I know that you love this project, but I can tell that you're sick of dealing with all of the drama and bullshit that comes with it. I'm not trying to convince you either way, I just want to make sure that you take a bit of time to cool off and reassess the situation (maybe take a week or two off and see what happens?), as you've waited for a good year and a half (I'm assuming you're a first day preorderer too). Just imagine if you ordered the Pandora and didn't read the forums at all. You wouldn't know about any of the shit that happened in the background, and one day, a Pandora arrives, and it's everything you ever wanted. Try not to let the means get in the way of the end.

P.P.S.: It's really late at night, so if most of this shit doesn't make sense, I'm sorry. I'm just pained to see so many people who really care about this project have such negative feelings about it. Maybe we should all take a week or two off. (Except for the OP team, you guys aren't getting any slack. ;) )

EDIT1: Formatting.
 
And don't forget that 11g doesn't give you 5MB/s as the 54Mb/s may indicate. On a standard 802.11g network you'll get around 22Mb/s, i.e. around 2.7MB/s theoretical maximum transfer rate.

My N900 seems to get around 650KB/s from a real ftp server, most of the time. Peaks are a bit higher, but not trustworthy - the speed drops more if the file is large. (Written to /dev/null)

-Tor
 
As a person with exactly zero interest in the Pandora one way or another (no pre-order, no order, no interest, no intention to buy):

Vorporeal said:
The first place where people are losing perspective is that they forget that their financial contribution to the project pales in comparison to the financial contributions from the team members.

I don't think people are saying they are in control - they are just being consumers. I don't give money to companies that mess me around, and it seems that other people are of the same opinion. Customers are the most important part of any business because without them you don't have a business. I think that OP have been too open and that's caused them a lot of trouble with people that don't understand normal business practices but unfortunately, I think it's only creating a rod for your own back by suggesting that they alone are in control. If the product isn't what the customers want, they will cancel pre-orders and not buy the product. It's a compromise - every customer *is* a stakeholder (maybe not in the legal sense, but in the sense that they have a "stake" in the business's future) in the same way, whether they pre-order or not.

And the financial problems of a company that you are dealing with who hold your money on the promise of a future delivery are very much every customer's concern, too. That's part of the problem, I feel. At the end of the day, though, whether someone has put in more money or not into the Pandora doesn't matter to 99.9% of their customers - every person has something at stake and every person has an agreed amount of money paid for an agreed product. How they get there is the company's problem, not the consumer. I don't care when a company tells me they have problems - we have a "contract" (including offer and acceptance and sometimes even as far as an exchange of funds) and how they fulfill it isn't my problem. This is why I don't care when a company posts me a product and it doesn't arrive, or they have to accept returned stock and sell it as "B-Grade" items... that's not my problem, as a customer I just want my end of the contract fulfilled. And that contract does *not* have to be written on paper - offer and acceptance are enough to form a contract.

That's no reflection on the current situation (again, I don't care, I just find these forum posts entertaining), just the way business works.


Vorporeal said:
If the delays get so bad that we reach critical cancellation mass and the project collapses, the team goes bankrupt. Kaput. They're financially FUCKED.

Personally, this would be my biggest worry if I was a "stakeholder" in any fashion. However, it's not accurate that the team goes bankrupt. They are a private limited company, registered separately from the other businesses operating at the same address. If OP Ltd. goes bust, the OP team lose any of their money still in the company, yes, but they aren't made personally bankrupt. There would be nothing to stop the directors of the company, say, employing the other members for their other companies and continuing business, or just letting OP Ltd. die and everyone carrying on as normal (and thus letting the creditors and customers fight over OP's carcass). A limited company has limited liability and thus it would be up to a court to prove that OP Ltd.'s officers acted negligently in order to seek any form of further action (e.g. personal bankruptcy, fraud charges, etc.) and there are more than enough factors in operation to make a legitimate cause that OP Ltd's ventures just failed due to bad luck (factory problems, global economy, pre-order cancellations, lack of further investment etc.). If OP Ltd. dies, the customers get bugger-all, they may or may not get a refund on their credit cards, the factories go unpaid, and everyone fights over what money *is* left, with the largest debts probably being paid first (i.e. the factories, etc.). Insurance probably exists for the factory's payments but I would be highly doubtful about whether it covers individual customers and their pre-orders. Bankruptcy courts can and do take all the money they have and give it to the largest creditors first. They could even screw over "employed staff" of OP Ltd. and not pay them, but even the staff would be paid before the customers who pre-ordered.

And if this happened? Well, (unless someone could prove deliberate foul play) the company directors wouldn't be able to lose more than their initial money inserted into the business (i.e. no more than they've already "lost") and would be free to continue running their own businesses, working, selling products etc. maybe even buying up the carcass of OP Ltd. and their bankrupt stock (though that would attract regulatory attention, I assume). And their other businesses would be completely unaffected. Maybe a bank or two wouldn't like seeing that on some company director's credit report next time one of their businesses needs money but it would hardly be crippling. And the customers? They'd get nothing delivered, would have to fight creditors and their credit card companies in order to get a refund (God help those that didn't pay by credit card) and would probably lose out in that the money returned wouldn't be the equivalent of the money invested, even if we're only talking about inflation.

I think that's a *real* concern here, whether or not it would ever actually happen. *That's* why I don't pre-order anything. That's why I don't buy from furniture shops unless they have the sofa I want in stock to take away today. That's why I don't pay a company each week to get a hamper at Christmas. People worrying about whether or not their Pandora will be sprayed or not should take a look at the wider picture.

I'm not saying that I think it will happen, I'm not saying that OP are "evil guys" (hell, the above could happen completely by accident, bad luck, etc. no matter what the company did to try to recover itself), I'm just saying that you don't know about the finances of OP Ltd. and that's a risk. Even banks can collapse, as we've seen recently. The fact that OP Ltd is registered as a separate company means that it won't be "bouyed up" by income from any other companies that the company directors may own. It's an independent entity and at any time the shareholders / directors are only liable for the amount of money that they put into the business themselves already. Everyone else (even the people who answer the phones, talk to the factories etc.) is at risk, even if they are earning a wage from OP Ltd. It was quite common in the 80's and 90's for videogames companies to repeatedly go broke and for the staff to move on to their successors, form their own company with the same employees or just be left owed money. Look at any of the ZX Spectrum-era software houses and follow their history on Wikipedia - a lot of them went bankrupt, neared bankruptcy, were bought out, moved on, etc. The projects were abandoned, the staff were laid off (sometimes owing money), and next week a new company formed by the same people from the bankrupt company would start up, find investment and repeat the cycle.

*That* would be my worry. Not what colour the cases are.

Vorporeal said:
From a mathematical perspective, this essentially means that every day they don't ship, they're losing money. I'm sure they're not stringing us along to turn it into a drinking game.

Now please tie that in with the above.

I don't want to be a doom-merchant but that's why I wouldn't ever pre-order something like this, no matter the history of other companies run by the same people. If OP was produced under another, well-established, profitable company's banner then, yes, that's a bit of security - even if it "failed", the other business ventures would soak up the losses. When Nintendo loses money because their product flops or their costs soar, nobody cares because they know that the company's other ventures and ideas and previous products and future plans are big enough to bouy them up. But when it's an independent entity struggling to produce a highly-complex, state-of-the-art, unique product in a tough patent-heavy marketplace, with almost zero experience of doing so, few staff, uncertain knowledge of the requirements of a lot of the tasks, taking shortcuts all the time, experiencing problems at every stage, cutting through every deadline, having simple communications problems, having to seek pre-order money to help finance what's so far been a total loss (financially speaking) - and that was to fund the first batch which may or may not pay for itself when it comes, nobody really knows for sure because surprises are around every corner - then you have a serious risk to consider. It may well pay off. It may not. But delays, expenses, mistakes, etc. do not inspire more confidence. And all the time, the market is being sipped away by customer-doubt, competitors, etc. not to mention bank charges, overheads, etc. that must now be twice or three times what was originally budgeted for based on a roughly 1-year production window. They may still all be inside a safe window or not, but only a handful of people can know for sure.

For me, the actual killers (not that I would pre-order anyway, or order this particular device) were: Not checking things like how FCC/EC certification worked. Not having decent communication links with suppliers (and not drafting contracts with those suppliers that lets you kick them up the bum if they don't perform, and/or not executing those clauses). Registering as a separate company right from the first word, and not piggybacking on another very-closely-related venture that *is* (I assume) profitable. Asking for pre-orders. Failing to check simple things like PayPal's policy on pre-orders, etc. (I would assume that the other related businesses would have come across and checked this information years previously). Allowing over a year of competitive advantage to catch up with the designs - that could have been a year of exclusivity in the market. Taking things to trade-shows etc. that you can't deliver - it just leaves a bad taste in the mouths of all the people who *are* interested in the product. Forum censorship also irked me a little, especially because I can't tell what *has* been censored.

I'm an open-source nut, and loved the original idea of an independent British-supported device that I might be able to buy and program. The good tastes of that have mostly gone but there was always too much risk here for me, and that's what other people are worried about. That's why the concern over delays - it's not "Give me the device because I can't program / prototype without it", it's "Give me the device because I want it in my hands before anything else goes wrong". I think people have a right to be suspicious and keen to just get their hands on the raw materials at least, so they have some of what they paid for. And there is such a thing as keeping the customer interested - PR has been laughable at times (weeks without any word when the last official statement left uncertainty about major items, etc.).

I can quite understand why a lot of people have "lost perspective". Confidence is wonderful for those who are secure in their knowledge - confidence without knowledge, though, is just blind faith. Some people are okay with that, some people aren't. I don't think there's anything specific that the OP team can do to remedy such things, it all seems either pretty obvious or pretty unavoidable because of the roads they've chosen. However, to suggest that other people shouldn't air their dissatisfaction is a bit of a crock - these people have money tied up in a venture that isn't turning out the way it was originally painted. And yes, they can cancel at any time, and lots do. But the point is, for those still in the queues - every person that cancels is a lost sale, one that finances your even getting a product at the end, and the people cancelling (who *were* customers) are stating some good reasons for them doing so. That should be a concern for everybody. And all of that is bad PR - it only takes a ONE-inch sideline column in any of the same magazines that are publishing stories about Pandora to seed doubt in thousands of potential customers. That one-inch can come from anything as small as "concerns were expressed about the projects future on the official forums" or "customers queries went unanswered for several days" or even just "the project is now a year late".

Customer dissatisfaction is a slippery slope, and most people forget that *potential* customers are the most important kind - without them you won't have any more customers. Some actions, decisions, announcements, attitudes, etc. are affecting the number of *customers*. What is that doing to the number of *potential* customers too?

Confidence is all good, and I sincerely hope that a good Linux-based open-source handheld does eventually appear on the British market. The trouble is, though, that as time goes on, it's looking less and less likely to be the Pandora.
 
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I don't want to add much anymore, as everything I do write up seems to be understood by some completely different than it was meant.

I never said I don't appreciate the fact that you all financed the Pandora. I know it wouldn't be possible without you and I'm really happy that you all are still sticking with us. I really am thankful for that.

What I didn't like about the post was that "unauthorised".
We did make clear that the Pandora has to be paid in advance because the actual costs are used for production and parts - and we surely couldn't have done it with that money.
So that money was not unauthorised - as we didn't take that money away from anyone, it was the choice of each user to take the risk and pay us - or not.

Also, no interest rate does help us. The parts have been delivered and paid in 2008 / 2009, we don't get a single cent out of interest.

Some posts sound to me like we would be some big bad company intentionally delaying the Pandora... and that's what makes me sad.
We're still just a bunch of humans, trying to do everything we can to deliver it as fast as we can. That's it.

Well, this will be my last post for a while. Maybe until after assembly.
A lot of things I do say seem to lead to complete misunderstandings - they seem to be read in a completely different way than what I meant.

You can be sure we do know that we couldn't have pulled off the whole project without you guys. And we're trying to do the best we can to do so.
But getting blamed because we FIX things is something hard to understand for me.

Anyways, enjoy. I'll be back after release. Promise :)
 
EvilDragon said:
I don't want to add much anymore, as everything I do write up seems to be understood by some completely different than it was meant.

I never said I don't appreciate the fact that you all financed the Pandora. I know it wouldn't be possible without you and I'm really happy that you all are still sticking with us. I really am thankful for that.

What I didn't like about the post was that "unauthorised".
We did make clear that the Pandora has to be paid in advance because the actual costs are used for production and parts - and we surely couldn't have done it with that money.
So that money was not unauthorised - as we didn't take that money away from anyone, it was the choice of each user to take the risk and pay us - or not.

Also, no interest rate does help us. The parts have been delivered and paid in 2008 / 2009, we don't get a single cent out of interest.

Some posts sound to me like we would be some big bad company intentionally delaying the Pandora... and that's what makes me sad.
We're still just a bunch of humans, trying to do everything we can to deliver it as fast as we can. That's it.

Well, this will be my last post for a while. Maybe until after assembly.
A lot of things I do say seem to lead to complete misunderstandings - they seem to be read in a completely different way than what I meant.

You can be sure we do know that we couldn't have pulled off the whole project without you guys. And we're trying to do the best we can to do so.
But getting blamed because we FIX things is something hard to understand for me.

Anyways, enjoy. I'll be back after release. Promise :)

Ur a top bloke ED. You still got my backing.
 
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