did anybody here preorder a pandora today?

i was just interested, in terms of the demographic of this place

there's only going to be 3000 in the first batch and, although i am most definitely going to get one eventually i can't ever really afford to be an early adopter, preferring always to wait until the dust has settled and anything unforeseen comes to light

i don't normally stick my neck out with opinion on emergent technology, but i'd be very surprised if this didn't take off in the manner that the zx spectrum did when i was a youth
i've always previously held back on purchasing handheld gadgets, as none of them did the things in software that i wanted or were lacking in one hardware aspect or other
[some of you may say that your pda or phone already does all the things you need of it. in my case, i have an old mobile phone (which i maintain) because it is just that - a phone, that is small and sturdy and doesn't crash or need charging as much as i see others']
with regards this handheld, i think i share a pretty similar mentality as the guys who felt a need for, and conceived the pandora. also, them having a forum where they gathered feature suggestions from potential users is pretty progressive in my opinion

though having said all that, i'm also the guy who was confounded by the success of the ipod, when it was known it had prohibitive drm. but then, i don't watch television or read "style" mags or general tabloid publications and, thus, had it pointed out to me by others that it was probably simply just weighty targetted advertising that secured ipod adoption over alternatives
however, one historical success that i do understand is the nintendo gameboy over the much more powerful, featureful and colourful sega gamegear and atari lynx. that was an excellent example of thinking outside the box in my opinion

what are your opinions on pandora's potential success? do you foresee any major pitfalls?

remember, even if it is found to be weaker than demanded in one area of its technologies, it being homebrew and having enough of a pool of talented users, folks will always find ways of circumventing limitation through optimisation - that's part of the fun, right? with these comments i am also harking back to the widespread programming aptitude that was cemented in the era of the early 8bit home computers, as user demands on these machines increased at a time when bolt-on hardware upgrades were rare and expensive

my honest concern is whether the manufacturing and supply infrastructure of pandora is there to meet an exponential demand as word permeates through (mainly) online commentary. of course, that would only really apply in the case of my own mass-adoption predictions

what say you?


sorry for the random spiel. at least i added something to this post aside just that last line, as i have done similarly before ;)
 
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Waiting. I need to see how the applications will be fleshed out and how well the Pandora group handles success or more likely lack of success.

Otherwise, there's a complete lack of real information. You have to navigate the forum to get anywhere and that's just... stupid to be quite honest. There's also little solid ground.
 
Well one thing Nintendo had going for it with the Gameboy was the game's like tetris which women seem to love and the price that it has had. Also the battery life is a good thing when you bring out a handheld. I have never heard of this Pandora so I dont really see it getting anywhere.
 
Well one thing Nintendo had going for it with the Gameboy was the game's like tetris which women seem to love and the price that it has had. Also the battery life is a good thing when you bring out a handheld. I have never heard of this Pandora so I dont really see it getting anywhere.

i wouldn't like to guess the validity of the female theory, but i didn't explain about the battery life and it being pocket sized because i assumed it was common knowledge
as for...
I have never heard of this Pandora so I dont really see it getting anywhere.
...i would say, if you weren't waiting or looking for something like this then it's probably not your thing
 
Well I read more about this Pandora on another site and Its made by the ppl who made the GP32. Thats the handheld that only seen a release in South Koria right? Well your right in that its not my cup of tea plus Im not into the homebrew games.
 
Yes I preordered

I preordered because it seems to be a great specced device that gets a lot of things right - great configuration, good battery life, open specs. I primarily bought it to write games more so than to play games. I am writing a game for the iphone currently and wanted to get an open device on which I can prototype things. So this is very cool for my needs.
 
Well I read more about this Pandora on another site and Its made by the ppl who made the GP32. Thats the handheld that only seen a release in South Koria right?
Wrong information: the Pandora has been designed by people from the gp32/gp2x community but it's in no way related to the gp maker.
 
I preordered one. It will be fun doing some coding for it, and there seems to be a bunch of developers that will give it a try.

As for the hardware itself, as I see it, any way it goes (well, with the exception that they take the preorder money and run off to Bahams) is OK with me.

A) Either it takes off and is a huge success - cool, I own a rare first-generation device!
B) Huge failure - cool, I own a rarity with only 3000 ever produced! :D
 
thats 3,000 or perhaps 4,000 in the first production run. Unlikely to be a failure more a very popular underground device...
 
Wrong information: the Pandora has been designed by people from the gp32/gp2x community but it's in no way related to the gp maker.

sorry but your wrong I wasnt talking about some gp maker I have never heard of I was talking about the gp32/gp2x. The Handheld Im talking about is the one on this website www.Wikipedia.com
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(console)

And yes the most important parts of that handheld have been designed by firms like ARM, Texas Instruments (with Imagination Technologies IP for the SGX530) amongst others. And no I don't think GP32x forum members made any suggestions to PowerVR for instance how to design Series5/Eurasia years ago LOL :D
 
well I missed the part where it said they got some idea's and suggestions from the gp32/2x forum community. sorry
 
I apologize for my temper earlier. I was having a bit of a bad day, and a mood swing at the same time. >.> Still, it's no excuse for my behavior. Sorry.
 
well I missed the part where it said they got some idea's and suggestions from the gp32/2x forum community. sorry

I'd figure that such suggestions would had been more in the direction of device layout, ergonomics and the likes.
 
Alt Party 2008 Invitation is a graphics demo on OMAP3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evJ0Vr8LjYk

Seeing Pandora's design turn out so well appointed is gratifying. I pushed for a capable, PowerVR based application processor back when they were still considering a Magic Eyes chip in the original design discussion.

I even emailed Imgtec that they should try to steer the designers towards an SoC that would be more fitting to a games console.
 
I even emailed Imgtec that they should try to steer the designers towards an SoC that would be more fitting to a games console.

While I know what you mean, there wouldn't had been a chance that PowerVR would have designed a family of scalable graphics processors that wouldn't fit that description. In fact the used 530@110MHz might be the most powerful graphics sollution for the die size it occupies and it's frequency compared to anything else yet it isn't the biggest SGX either.

Eurasia was designed on the fundaments and experience they gathered from the canned Series5 GPU and they had two primary goals which were considered on the chalkboard design from the get go: GPGPU and GPU efficiency. Here they managed to create an even more efficient design than that canned PC GPU for one because they didn't have the headache an IHV usually has with latencies and high end designs and as a second because as fore mentioned the experience paid off. I must have said somewhere in the past that I doubt that something like the SGX555 could reach that canned PMX GPU of the past, and I'm afraid that at least for some scenarios I was wrong by more than just a bit.

Now I am aware that SGX540/5 has been finished and might be shipping soon. Above that my sniffing nose tells me that there might have been some changes none of us is aware yet. A recent roadmap showed that the future Series6 architecture should be done somewhere in 2009. I'd guess somewhere in the second hald of the year and I hope we'll have an announcement in that timeframe. It will be mighty interesting to see how scalable that design will be and if IMG will and can aim with that one for something way more bold than UMPCs or handheld consoles ;)
 
I'm kinda puzzled with the naming, Pandora is a trademarked brand name by Korg for a portable guitar multi-FX unit.
 
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