Toronto, Tuesday, Pubgrub And Pandora


I think the volume is pretty loud .. did we crank it up? I was keeping it down quite a bit in general, out of habit, probably (sleeping little girl nearby my office :)

I tnhink when we fired up Hatari and Xenon 2 Megablast, that was half volume or so, and pretty loud?

Or maybe I consider loud what isn't loud. *shrug*

I was up half the night and am all bleery and chatty and delirious, so I'm off.. but it was a good time. I'm up for another Pandora geekout another lunchhour if anyone is up.

jeff
 
Actually I cranked it up. And down. And back up again. I love that volume wheel, it makes me very happy :D
It was definitely loud enough to hear, but hearing something doesn't mean you can understand it. I could hear the music playing in Hatari, and knew there was something coming out of the speakers for that video you played, but I was having trouble making out the words unless I focused on it. That's what I mean by it not being quite loud enough: it doesn't rise very well against background noise. I also wasn't sitting right in front of it at the time, so that may have contributed.
Perhaps we can do a Thursday next time. My Thursday's are the only day of the week I can practically guarantee I'll have free.
 
Nice review wizardstan, I look forward to the vid upload

is it posible for any audio boost hack to happen in future, or is that not a poss? It's no big deal really but in the summer chilling in park it would be good if a couple of you could enjoy a film without needing earphones.
Also the double click pixel thing, again for me probably I will use the nub and enter button more, but would it be possible/likely that someone will do something like you suggested with the surrounding pixels?
 
Gosh, I'm so jealous of all you that live close to someone who has an assembled (or unassembled, for that matter) Pandora! :D I can't wait, and posts like WizardStan's just make it more difficult. :) Thanks for the run-down.
 
Incidentally, when I got back to work, I did not get in trouble for missing the meeting. In fact, another meeting I was supposed to have was canceled.
Conveniently I had scheduled yesterday as holiday, and everyone just kind of assumed I had extended it one day. :D
I did get in trouble for having a camera in the office, once they realized what it was. :(
 
WizardStan said:
I didn't get as much play with the D-pad as I could have. It felt good. Played Giana's return a bit, it worked smoothly, didn't scrape or poke my fingers. I can believe this would be good for extended play.

Heh - I more played with the DPad than with anything else :D
And I do love it.

The sound was also a lot quieter than I had expected. I knew it wouldn't be able to fill a room or anything, but I expected to be able to hear a little better than I did. That pub wasn't exactly loud, and it was hard to hear sometimes.

Oh, you do know there's also a software mixer?
If the software mixer was low, the hardware volume wheel can't do much about it :)
Also, some apps do seem to lower the volume themselves.

I know VICE did scare me the first time I used it because it was incredibly loud :D
 
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Good call, might e been tuned down there

I should do a max volume video :)

thursdays are usually good for downtown for me, just been so rare since I had a free moment in months :/

jeffphone

now I covet tempel's touchbook :)
 
Thanks skeezix for inviting us out! And thanks WizardStan for paying attention to all these details; I didn't have nearly enough forethought to check out so much of the hardware. And congratulations to both of you on not getting fired!

I'm not really sure what to add, except that it met all my expectations. In my mind, I keep comparing it to that Touch Book that skeezix apparently covets; it's also an OMAP3530-based device, made by a small startup company, but the difference is that the TB was rushed out after just a year of development, and it shows (the TB does what I need it to quite well, but I have a litany of complaints that you're all about to read). The casing on the TB seems loose and cheap, but the casing on skeezix's Pandora is solid. Do you all remember when some prototype cases came in and MWeston described them as "an insult"? Yeah, skeezix's prototype has one of those cases, and it was still great (oh, except the hinge was kinda loose, but I think this was one of the Craig-abused versions). The touchscreen on the Pandora was accurate enough to use with a finger, which is no small feat given that my TB's touchscreen, so much larger than the Pandora's, can be inaccurate enough to make fingers useless. The software all seems well thought-out, even down to details like the menu button ignoring rapid mashing so impatient users don't find themselves with half a dozen windows suddenly spawning (I can definitely not say the same about the software on the TB). Even the stylus felt nicer than the one that came with my TB! So everyone upset with delays: the TB is what the Pandora would have looked like if it had been rushed out. Be happy that you're getting something far better.

So yeah, I have nothing but nice things to say about it so far (oh wait, one exception: the pixel-perfect double-tap was indeed tough, but skeezix and the rest of the devs are aware, so don't be surprised if the issue disappears soon. Alternatively, just switch to single-tap activation). Again, I wasn't the most attentive person there, so I imagine I could find something to gripe about eventually, but I haven't seen it yet.

For posterity, I can second much of what WizardStan said. Nubs were great for playing Q3; I managed to suck only as much as I do with any dual-stick FPS. Keyboard worked far better than any of the handheld qwertys I've tried before (though, like WizardStan said, hunting for special characters was a challenge that I'm sure will be corrected with practice). That outline on the case lid is not at all as prominent as some of the photos would make you believe (in photos, it almost looks like a section of the case is raised, but it's actually perfectly flush; I expect the line will disappear entirely after proper finishing). However, I disagree with him on two points: I was very impressed with the sound - I think you could gather people around a video playing on the Pandora (though I think my expectations were low as I'm going to be using headphones regardless); and I was actually surprised at how small it was (ED's high-res videos have spoiled me).

Exciting times, everyone! Now calm your beating hearts and continue to wait patiently; you'll be happy with the result.
 
Oh, about pixel-perfect doubleclick: AFAIK you can change the jitter area in /etc/ts.conf, so you won't have to be pixel-perfect anymore :)
It's just not tweaked yet.
 
Excellent reviews guys, sounds like you had fun.

I have a feeling there will be more personal reviews once the actual first Pandoras start shipping out.
 
EvilDragon said:
Oh, about pixel-perfect doubleclick: AFAIK you can change the jitter area in /etc/ts.conf, so you won't have to be pixel-perfect anymore :)
It's just not tweaked yet.
FFS! Don't post here... TWEAK IT!


:)


It is good to see that others are feeling the same as I did when I had ED's "thing" in my hands [pun intended].
Since then the waiting wasn't hard any more. Well, now that the 1st of April will not be the Assembly Day... :(

Everybody should stay calm and enjoy the ride. It is worth it!


side note: WIFI is important for me as well. However, I could cope with 45KBytes/s for a while. I guess the only intended use i will have problems with is watching streaming videos.
 
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Creature XL said:
EvilDragon said:
Oh, about pixel-perfect doubleclick: AFAIK you can change the jitter area in /etc/ts.conf, so you won't have to be pixel-perfect anymore :)
It's just not tweaked yet.
FFS! Don't post here... TWEAK IT!

Hehe, I actually like it as it is, so it shouldn't be me who should tweak it :D

You can also switch to one-click mode for the file manager, very convenient.

For playing games, I'm not gonna use XFCE4 anyways, so I don't care about doubleclicking :D
 
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Excellent reviews guys, nice to see other forum members spending some qt with the Pandora :D

Btw, When i tried Picodrive the volume was more than loud enough, so should be fine once it has been setup properly.
 
The volume thing could've just been me, the same way I didn't notice any ghosting. Some people are just more sensitive than others.
 
I know ED's already explained this but I had just posted to the unofficial blog and thought a repeat here would'nt do any harm so....

Regarding the double-tap issue, I’m using xfce on an openmoko freerunner phone and xfce has a setting concerning double-tap which is the acceptable radius (in number of pixels) that the second tap must fall into to actually be considered a second tap so this is definitely configurable. Also, the interval between taps is something that you can also configure, ex. the second tap has to come no longer than 250ms after the first one to be considered as a second tap, otherwise it is considered as another first tap. I hope this explanation puts some more concerns to rest (unless it was explained so badly as to cause more confusion :p )
 
WizardStan said:
The volume thing could've just been me, the same way I didn't notice any ghosting. Some people are just more sensitive than others.
It sounds as if it just needed to be set up correctly. I'm always finding handhelds too quiet, but the Pandora is definitley as loud as my DSi LL.
 
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