v2 (or v1.5) could be take over the world


gisborne

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I pre-registered for OP and waited my 18 months for it.


And then it was fairly cool, but not quite there. I was after a computer I could carry everywhere, in a jacket pocket, waist pack or cargo pants. OP is just a bit too thick to do that comfortably, I'm afraid.


And there are build quality issues. The case is, to be fair, absolutely terrible. The plastic around several of the screws has broken off. The power connector is loose so it only charges if I press the power connector upward. And I've hardly used the thing! (did I mention that it's just a bit too big?)


I would pay $500 for an OP that was 2/3 as thick with a decent case (metal would be heaven).


I understand that what I'm asking for isn't really what it was designed for -- its creators and much of its community are after a portable game machine. And that's fine. As such it works fine (the build quality issues notwithstanding).


But there are *no* pocket computers on the market. The closest you can come is the Vaio P (which has anemic performance and battery life and will run you $1500 for a decent one) and the N900 (which thinks it's a phone not a computer and also has anemic battery life).


So I'm saying there's an opportunity there. I think it's a pretty big one -- there are a lot of Linux geeks who might like a decent pocket computer. There are plenty of Apple haters. There are a *lot* of people building embedded systems of one kind or another who would love to have a complete, robust Linux device for $500.


For a v1 device from a bunch of blokes in a shed who have never done anything remotely like this before, I say Bravo. Amazing achievement.


But if you're not designing a v2 (or at least a v1.5) already, in 18 months you'll be selling these things remaindered through op shops and wondering what happened to your glory days. But do a new case that isn't rubbish and looks decent with a new, thinner battery (I'll settle for 5 hours), or maybe a battery that straps to the bottom so you can vary the size-battery life tradeoff.


That there would be amazing. There are at least two other things you could consider that would be even more amazing: charge an extra $50 per unit for a screen that can rotate to a tablet mode. Put a bigger, higher-resolution display in it.


But I'd settle, basically, for a form factor that doesn't suck. Keyboard is doable, basic features are great, nubs are amazing. But the shape, durability and look of the thing are just not going to do it.


*Please* tell me you're working on this.
 
Nope, they're not.


At the moment, they're just trying to produce the remaining first and second batches preorders.


They had to start selling "premium" pandora to get enough money to produce the remaining ones.


So, making another device or improving this one is not in at the agenda.


Come back in a year or two.
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Many of the good ideas (such as slideout keyboard and rotatable screen which turns a laptop into a tablet) have been patented which prevents the Pandora from using such form factors. OpenPandora is privately funded by a few individuals and sales are very modest which makes purchasing licenses for use of patented designs not feasible.


The market for such a niche device is far too small for a large company to venture so its only up to us hobbyists to design something like the Pandora.
 
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This was an interesting topic, I have a Vaio-P and when I got my Pandora I was surprised the size difference wasnt that much, the Panda is actually thicker then the VP. However the small difference makes all the difference in the world, theres no way any of my trousers could squeeze VP into any pocket, Panda does fit into all of them but then I dont wear very tight pants. The battrylife also make the VP not very useful on the road, its more like a light desktop that you still use on a desk. But the size of the Panda has reduced it to a gamemachine for me, the screen resolution is to low for me and the keyboard to uncomfortable and slow to use, it can be done but only in extreme emergencys wich is basically never for me.


What I would want from a new version is slightly bigger display and much higher res, like 1600x960 and flat keys with smaller gaps between them.


I could live without the speakers or having them downgraded for size, its not important on a portable machine and you can always use headphones for quality, that free surface for the current speaker use should be more display and more resolution. Id also like a SSD like just a single chip on the mobo, so that theres more then 100mb system storage.


If you went with OLED it would be thinner display andmayby the upper case part could be thinner as result, and mayby you could remove the batterylid, instead you could open it by folding the keyboard surface up and there wouldnt be an extra plastic wall between battery and hardware, and less edges that can be uneven.


The material could be carbonfiber with no extra paint or a very thin coat. And it should have HDMI, was there something about the gpu of Panda that couldnt support high-res? That should change, to hook it up to a standard display and get high-res desktop would be worth its weight in gold, and it should have a video-decode chip to.


I think thats all I could wish for.

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^^Eh, I tried in my first post to insta-kill the topic, but it didn't work
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I wish the pandora was able to run 360/PS3/Crysis 3 engine games at full detail with a 1080p screen and a 5.1 surround sound without being larger than it is now.


EDIT: Oh, I forgot, and 2To of internal memory!
 
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Granted, but it costs more than a trip to outer space.


I wish it were able to turn into a really beautiful woman who's madly in love with me.


OH, wrong thread. Whoops.
 
Do note, there is a class of machine UMPC, of which there are many. Many are pocketable, even (and hard to get in North America :p ) Heck, look up Zaurus PDAs which run linux in various PDA form factors.


There is also the OQO style of machine; theres one I forget right now where the keyboard is qwery, but weith the screen stuck right in the middle, and is PSP sized.


Theres literalyl several hundreds of products in the pocketable computer category over the last decade, and a few dozen current ones, you just have to look hard (mostly our of Japan and Korea, a few here.) Theres a few companies that specialize in imports, English-ification, etc.


Pandora is different because it is a pretty good umpc, but it also ahs the gaming controls etc; thats what really sets it apart from the others. Otherwise, Beagleboard with a little case and a wireless keyboard might be your thing :)


(I agree, its not a well served market, but evidently its not as big a market _yet_ as we'd like, since there are so many of these products, and none of them have been successful; Sony and the likes pushed and got no where..)


jeff
 
You can find quite a bit of those on the Dynamism site.


None of them are quite the Pandora either.
 
Aside from the Pandora, the UMID MBook is the smallest form factor I could find that was still a full "desktop" machine. It all really comes down to what you are looking for in the device... For me, I would rather have a larger laptop mainly for a larger screen and resolutions (That's why I own a 10" Eee PC Netbook); but that is my personal preference. I never intend to really use the Pandora to its full potential as a Linux machine; I mainly want it for an pocketable emulating gaming machine. The fact that it COULD be used as a full Linux machine is just a bonus to me.


FYI... there is never going to be a "perfect device". Every component choice and every design decision comes with a trade-off.
 
Granted: it transforms into Kup, i mean c'mon, nobody really liked that transformer, did they?


I Wish the pandora had 2 screens for obvious reasons.
 
An 1.5 version is no way to go, as others already said, the team is focusing to assembly and ship the remaining of batch 1 and after that batch 2 will follow only after both of them are fullfilled if the team has still energy and we help them again the brainstorming can start about a pandova v2.


Something I would suggest aswell is to replace some of the plastic part (internal where keyboard and stuff is) with alluminium, alluminium is light, and also very good for dissipate the heat (pandora can become hot after some time especially under charge) plus using alluminium I think the whole case will be some less tick.


I would like to see some higher resolution myself, but not like somebody here said 1600x960 thats bu....it you need atleast a 13" display for handle such resolution without kill your eyes, rather something like 1000x600 for example (or something close to that) with a 5.2 inch display could be doable, this could be maybe obtained using the actual area where we have the speakers, move the speakers where we have the microphone (I think some implementation to make both the speakers and the microphone co-exist together should exist), which would make the pandora screen benefit of an extra inch while the case instead would remain the same size as it is now since we want keep it pocketable :)
 
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Look: the point of this post was that the thing as it stands is almost but not quite right to sell into an entirely different and possibly significantly larger market. And that it would be possible to redesign the case and battery and do that. This seems practical and desirable to me.
 
And I answered that it wasn't possible at the moment, since the team is too busy producing pandoras.


(Then, a few people started to throw random impossible ideas, so I went the troll way because I've seen quite a few those topics and they tend to piss me off badly)


But if you really want a redesign of the case, you're free to make a third party case and a third party battery!


Go for it man, nothing is keeping you from doing it.
 
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Look: the point of this post was that the thing as it stands is almost but not quite right to sell into an entirely different and possibly significantly larger market. And that it would be possible to redesign the case and battery and do that. This seems practical and desirable to me.

Have you looked inside the case? There's no room for anything else. What were your plans for the case and the battery? Were you going to make it thicker by moving the speakers into the lower half? I'm genuinely interested, as I'm finding that the Pandora is a perfect desktop replacement.


D.
 
Look: the point of this post was that the thing as it stands is almost but not quite right to sell into an entirely different and possibly significantly larger market. And that it would be possible to redesign the case and battery and do that. This seems practical and desirable to me.

The technology for what you want to happen does not yet exist.


We all want a tiny computer with an amazing battery life. When the technology exists we will try to make it happen.


You say the case is rubbish, maybe you should open it up and see just how clever it actually is in there to get all that in to such a tiny space before you judge it anymore.
 
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