Pandora Console Ready For Pre-Orders 309
Croakyvoice writes "Finally, months after the official announcement, 3,000 lucky people can now pre-order Pandora, possibly the world's fastest handheld console. It boasts a processor capable of up to 900 MHZ, PowerVR 3D graphics, a large 800x480 LCD touchscreen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, dual SD card slots, TV out, dual analogue and digital controls, a clamshell DS Lite-style shape, and a 43-button mini keyboard. The console already boasts an amazing amount of ready-for-release software such as Ubuntu and many full-speed emulators for systems such as Snes, Amiga, Megadrive, and many more that are not publicly announced yet. The console is as powerful as the original Xbox and on a par with the Nintendo Wii. Those interested should visit OpenPandora.Org. For the full history of Pandora from inception until the present, check out the Pandora Homebrew Site."
What part of this advertisement is news??? (Score:3, Insightful)
It boasts a processor capable of up to 900 MHZ,
It is 'possibly' the world's fastest console.
It "boasts" an amazing amount of ready-for-release software such as Ubuntu and many full-speed emulators
The console is as powerful as the original Xbox and on a par with the Nintendo Wii.
All this, and we are lucky to pre-order???
Lisa: They can't seriously expect us to swallow that tripe.
Skinner: Now as a special treat courtesy of our friends at the Meat
Council, please help yourself to this tripe.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It sounds like an advertizement, but it really is news. This handheld console has been developed in an insane short amount of time.
It totally blows away the alternative open source handheld, the GP2x. The people that made this looked at all the problems people had with the GP2x and improved on that, all this for a very reasonable price.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Though the real successor of the GP2x is the Wiz:
http://gp2x.co.uk/ [gp2x.co.uk]
And the difference is smaller between those. I'd take the Pandora over the Wiz though, except for form factor maybe. The resolution of the Pandora is the best part :)
Re:What part of this advertisement is news??? (Score:5, Informative)
There's also price. Of course pandora has many more features, perhaps a comparison is in order. @#$!@#$ slashdot doesn't support tables, so this is the best I could do :
Pandora
Pandora [openpandora.org]
ARM Cortex-A8 600MHz CPU
128M ram
3D opengl ES 2.0 acceleration
800x480 4.3" touchscreen LCD
Wifi
Keyboard
dual SDHC card (both expansion and storage)
Internal battery and USB charger
$329.99 / £199.99 (Inc VAT) / E249.99 (Inc VAT)
GP2x WIZ
Wiz [gp2x.co.uk]
533Mhz ARM CPU
64M ram
3D opengl acceleration
OLED Touch Screen 2.8" 320x200
No wifi (BUT easy to add because of USB host)
No keyboard (BUT again, easy to add because of USB host)
single SD card (both expansion and storage, 99% sure SDHC card)
Internal battery and USB charger (thank God ! compared to GP2X F-200 this is heaven)
US$ 179.90 (~124.32 EUR) [play-asia.com]
PSP
PSP [about.com]
PSP cpu 333Mhz
32M ram (64M for the psp slim)
3D acceleration (?)
480x272 LCD screen (great screen imho)
Wifi
MS pro duo expansion (expensive, only storage)
Internal battery and USB charger
Probably USB host capability but not useable
US$ 213.99 (179 euro) [amazon.com]
Surprisingly of all these devices it's the PSP that has the largest library of emulators (even a "somewhat playable" n64 emu, something the pandora devs think impossible (read the gp2x forums ... well ... euhm tomorrow should be better, right ?)
As an ebook reader the PSP blows the socks of the WIZ though, even if just because of larger screen, and it is also larger than the pandora, so I wonder.
This list is limited to devices with actual useable gaming controls. The iphone/ipod touch and the nokia n810 are obvious competitors, but lack (decent) gaming controls. Actually the n810 is kinda nice, I ought to try one.
You forgot DS (Score:2)
Surprisingly of all these devices it's the PSP that has the largest library of emulators
Only because it's been out longer (March 2005 in North America vs. November 2008).
This list is limited to devices with actual useable gaming controls.
Was there a reason that you left off the DS?
Nintendo DS with CycloDS Evolution accessory
North American price: 180 USD
Re: (Score:2)
IMO the biggest difference between Pandora and PSP is its open source nature, and the receptive attitude OpenPandora has shown towards homebrew development.
this is the same reason GP32/GP2X/WIZ were popular amongst geeks/developers, but the Pandora has finally matched that open and pro-consumer attitude with an exceptional hardware design/specs.
built in Wi-Fi and QWERTY keyboard are a must. having to carry a separate keyboard attachment is a major shortcoming for a handheld console. i like being able to gra
Re:What part of this advertisement is news??? (Score:5, Interesting)
A "console" is something you put under or next-to your TV, along with your VCR, DVR, and Stereo.
A handheld device is more properly termed a "portable", not a console.
Also this news story reads like an advertisement. Remember the Atari Lynx? It was the most-powerful portable of its time (late 80s), and was supposed to kill-off the boring black-and-white Gameboy, because the Lynx had full-color with stereo sound and an ultra-fast processor. Doesn't that just want to make you go "oooo"?
The Lynx flopped.
Don't be surprised if Pandora does too. It takes more than being "the most powerful" to succeed in gaming. In fact, the #1 consoles of the past were actually NOT the most powerful. Atari 2600 was woefully slow; NES was inferior to Sega Master System. PS1 was only 32-bit but still trumped the faster N64. PS2 was weaker than Xbox or Cube, but still came out #1.
I'm sure the Nintendo DS portable will still be #1 for several more years.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sure it will, it has brilliant games! That wouldn't stop the Pandora from being a success at all, though, they're not competing that much. The DS isn't particularly good with emus thanks to a small screen, can't really emu anything more then a Genesis, has a damn slow browser which also suffers from the screen, is hard to code for, doesn't work as a Portable Media Player, and so on and so forth. If the Pandora makes the buyers h
in DefenSe of Nintendo hardware (Score:2)
The DS isn't particularly good with emus thanks to a small screen, can't really emu anything more then a Genesis
NeoGeo works, and so do the majority of Super NES games. But whether those platforms are "more than a Genesis" is in the eye of the beholder.
has a damn slow browser which also suffers from the screen
Are you talking about Nintendo DS Browser or DSOrganize Web Browser?
is hard to code for
In what way?
doesn't work as a Portable Media Player
MoonShell works for me. Sure, you have to convert video to DPG for the DS, but you also have to convert video to the PSP's obscure flavor of MPEG-4.
Re: (Score:2)
I think he meant without scaling or scrolling the screen. I use it all the time to play NES and GBC games, but gave up on SNES, Genesis, or anything requiring more than 256x192 pixels.
About the only thing the Pandora can't emulate is the DS thanks to its dual screens... I've got my CycloDS to keep me from cartridge-swapping and save-file backup, and while I was able to emulate most of the old consoles, the games were pretty much unplayable beyond NES/GBC/SMS/Atari.
Re:What part of this advertisement is news??? (Score:5, Insightful)
PS1 was only 32-bit but still trumped the faster N64.
"32-bit" is a completely meaningless term in this context, just so you know.
Re: (Score:2)
>>>>>PS1 was only 32-bit but still trumped the faster N64.
>>"32-bit" is a completely meaningless term.
But not the term "slower" or "faster" when measuring relative performance. The PS1 is clearly slower than the N64's processor, and yet despite that handicap, came-out on top. Read the WHOLE sentence, not just the first half. Thank you. :-) (Also I disagree that "bitness" is completely meaningless.) (Even if you designed an 8-bit processor using modern technology, no way is it goin
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Parentheses also have meaning, but not the way in which you used them. Points or commas, or just good sentence structure might be good starting points next time.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow. You remind me of my dead English teacher. She was anal too. (Point: Who cares how I structured my message? This is just a chat forum. Loosen up, drop out, chill out.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
(Also I disagree that "bitness" is completely meaningless.)
I disagree with your disagreement.
Depending on what point the Marketing department wants to make, "bitness" could refer to any of the following:
- word size in CPU instruction decoder
- word size in CPU registers
- word size in co-processors, such as graphics chips
- address bus width
- data bus width
- color depth of graphics hardware
- DAC resolution of audio hardware
- sum of "bitness" of multiple processors
- other meanings as convenient
None of these val
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Which was actually a case of marketers who were lying. Anybody who has opened a Jaguar can see it used a 16/32-bit 68000 for its "brain", so basically the Jaguar was just a Genesis/Megadrive on steroids. In contrast, the Nintendo 64 actually did have a 64-bit processor that could grab & process 64 bit chunks from RAM or ROM, so the Japanese were being honest in their naming of the console. (The part they left-out was that most N64 games used the processor's 32-bit backwards-compatibility mode.)
In
Re: (Score:2)
That goes back to my original point: The superior console/portable is typically NOT the #1 selling games machine.
But that's no reason for the enthusiast not to buy it. Even if not a single original game comes out for it, it's going to be an awesome device for emulators, linux native games, scummvm, wifi access, etc. I'd rather have nethack in my pocket than any game for the DS or PSP.
The fact that the best hardware isn't always the most popular is a great excuse for a smug sense of superiority too. ;)
NetHack is on DS (Score:2)
Even if not a single original game comes out for it, it's going to be an awesome device for emulators
Where can most people legally get ROMs, so that the major video game publishers can't convince a judge that the non-infringing uses of Pandora are insubstantial?
linux native games
Games for Linux published by Loki are designed for an x86 CPU, not an ARM CPU. Only games with a Free program (e.g. Quake 3) and games whose authors are willing to spend time and money to port them will run on Pandora.
I'd rather have nethack in my pocket than any game for the DS or PSP.
You say you'd rather have a DS game [commixus.com] than any DS game. I don't follow this.
Jaguar games running on IOP vs. Tom (Score:3, Informative)
Anybody who has opened a Jaguar can see it used a 16/32-bit 68000 for its "brain"
There were three CPUs inside a Jaguar. An MC68000 (intended as an input/output procesor or "IOP") sat next to the game controllers. A 32-bit RISC CPU ("Tom") was on the GPU die, and another 32-bit RISC CPU ("Jerry") sat next to the APU. The "64-bit designation" of the Jaguar comes from the 64-bit data bus between Tom and RAM. What confuses a lot of critics is that games varied in how they allocated tasks between Tom and the IOP. Some games, especially those developed by Genesis/Amiga/Atari ST veterans, woul
Re: (Score:2)
This CAN be a console.
USB Hub + USB controllers + TV-Out = Multiplayer/Singleplayer on TV. If you have something like this: http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-6m-49-en-70-qc4.html [play-asia.com] the hub may be unnecessary.
USB hard/flash drives would work too.
How many potential customers for a port? (Score:2)
USB Hub + USB controllers + TV-Out = Multiplayer/Singleplayer on TV.
That'd be good for single-screen multiplayer games such as fighting games and minigame collections and Bomberman and the like. But there's one problem: the most popular 4-player games are all proprietary software. You can make hardware capable of PS2-class graphics and plug up all the hubs you want, but you're not going to see professional games unless the professionals can make a business case for porting their proprietary works to Pandora, and that depends on the number of potential customers. Is there an
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It would be so Neal Stephenson
I can't remember the exact quote but
"He heard so many people call book 'Kafkaesque' and wondered what exactly that meant, until he read Kafka and realised that it simply meant 'boring.'"
Neal Stephenson wrote some good books, but after _Quicksilver_ I think "So Neal Stephenson" is a term with mixed meaning.
Re: (Score:2)
Continuing on this tangent, "So Neal Stephenson" means (to me) that the author has a torrid love affair with his thesaurus. And gets paid by the word.
His first few books were very, very good. Something went wrong when the page count exploded.
GamePark... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Lynx flopped.
The power was that killed it. All super-powerful colour handhelds back then ate batteries like candy.
The GameBoy didn't survive *despite* being balck'n'white, it survived *because* it was black'n'white and could actually be carried everywhere (and not kept tied to a power cord).
Currently with the advance in power consumption and battery technology, this point isn't relevant any more.
The second main point is game library. That's something that several concurrent of the Lynx did understand : Nintendo quickly
Re: (Score:2)
> The Pandora may be a great machine (ditto the PSP), but I doubt it's going to topple Nintendo's dominance in the portable world.
The Pandora is beginning as a small project from a small company: they don't need to sell more than the DS to be a success; it would be enought to be the first in the open console niche (gp32x etc.).
Re: (Score:2)
i couldn't load the linked article, but for some reason, this image of the Pandora handheld does seem to be accessible. [dcemu.co.uk]
and, yes, this is news to a lot of people. personally i'm pretty psyched about a new powerful (and open source) handheld being brought to market. this will be another platform that homebrew developers will be able to explore--and one that they are actually welcomed on. if nothing else, Pandora will finally give consumers a viable alternative to the PSP for a robust portable entertainment sy
Atlantis Game Boy (Score:2, Informative)
If two years count as an insane short amount of time..
Game Informer (July 1996) and Total (issues 53 and 54) reported that Nintendo was working on a handheld video game system called Atlantis. In 2001, it was finally sold under the name Game Boy Advance.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, someone putting a logical rebuttal being modded down as flamebait. Classic Slashdot modding!
Of course, the parent post should be modded above its own parent post, which posits that "Since X is worse than Y, Z (being less worse than Y) is good."
But hey! why mod down a logical fallacy when you can mod the rebuttal as flamebait?
(I confidently await being modded to -43 Ridiculous meta-meta-moderation comments)
Re: (Score:2)
Well no, the GP wasn't correct, the GBA was a fairly significant advance and was released. DNF may be the most significant advance ever, but we'll probably never know because it still hasn't been released.
Making that sort of inane comparison is why the GP was modded to flamebait earlier, not because it pointed out a fallacy. But you're right that wasn't flamebait, that was trolling, so it was an incorrect mod.
But anyways, I'd sure love to be able to RTFA, but it's been down for like 4 hours now, at least.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
So, Nintendo takes plenty of time to develop rock-solid machines that are massively popular, while Pandora...
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Do we really want to open this box [wikipedia.org]?
Re: (Score:2)
The "ready for pre-orders"-part.
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The fact that the site is down shows that a lot of other people do in fact find this interesting and newsworthy. They say they will make the second batch in 2009, so it sounds like the first batch could be out by the end of 2008. They have already designed all the hardware, they just need some money up-front to build the 3000 units.
I ordered mine last night anyway (I had signed up to the pre-order mailing list) :)
Re: (Score:2)
And the price for luck? Only a measly USD329!
Preach on, my antioxidant friend, preach on!
(Not a day goes by that I rue for the /. days of old...I might be a 5-digit denizen, but I seem to remember actually looking forward to reading /....)
Re: (Score:2)
Well no, that's not really correct. Right now you have more buying power, but if it were to cost 329 Euro I doubt that you would be saying that.
You'd actually be paying something more like $235 which isn't necessarily unreasonable.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If all the trivial Iphone stories we get count as "news", even when they're just based on rumour, then yes, I think a one-off story about a brand new product counts as news.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Broken Link (Score:2, Informative)
My thumbs hurt just by looking at it. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's neat, but it doesn't seem to be very ergonomically designed.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
do remember it's only a bit larger than a DS, so i think it should be okay.
Re: (Score:2)
The DS isn't either, I hate the boxy and sharp design, it just feels bad in your hands. The DS should have been molded over the gamecube controller :D
Battery life is awesome, apparently. (Score:5, Insightful)
Battery life is said to be between 10 to 12 hours of normal usage ..
I ordered one. Can't wait to get it, as its got a lot of power and will make a superlative machine for developing music/synthesis/effects application .. plus the odd game or two, of course, lol ..
For those saying "It will Never Take Off", so? As long as Craig&Co. can make a tidy profit selling it as a niche item, it will be awesome anyway - the hardware itself is superlative, and the development scene for this console is like nothing else - even if they only sell a few thousand, thats at least going to give a few thousand people an awesome system to play with.
Don't forget: its totally open. So it won't "die" as long as there are people willing to get one and code for it, for their own purposes. Gizmondo and all that: dead coz Joe Blow Hacker can't code for it, easily. Pandora: Very, very easy to write code for it, so even if there are no commercial entities getting behind it as a mainstream console, it will still be highly useful to those who bought it ..
Re: (Score:2)
I have the last round of new hotness the GPX handheld console... It sits in it's packaging looks brand new and does nothing. It's a bitch to program for because the SDK was crap and there was almost no releases for it except for a couple of emulators.
That is an out-and-out lie. The GP2X File Archive [gp2x.de] contains hundreds of homebrew games and emulators, along with other applications. I myself have used the SDK, and it is very simple provided you know SDL. The major advantage of it is that the SDK is free and open-source; the device runs Linux so cross-compiling is very easy.
Do some research before making ridiculous claims.
on par with nintendo Wii? (Score:2, Insightful)
because you know, you cant compare diferent cpus just by the clock or cache size, that to not mention the video chips that are probably radically diferent.
Re: (Score:2)
But we all know the Wii is pretty low end, and I wouldn't be surprised if the general specs of the GPU in the Wii is well known either. Sure GeForce 3-era graphics was good back then, that don't mean a small chip can deliver similar performance today.
Re: (Score:2)
But the Wii isn't much more than an overclocked Gamecube. It do have the benefits of "enough" vram though, the Gamecube had a little to little.
You don't have to have that powerful GPUs for 640x480, especially with no AA or AF.
I always thought slashdotted was a myth (Score:5, Interesting)
I always thought that a modern slashdot'ting was a myth due to a poor, database-heavy configuration with insufficient oomph behind the servers. Then some git links to gp32x.com which had one of my GP2X ports as the second item on the front page (outside of the top visible screen). So my two-links-deep, petty news item on something vaguely related to the story (a quick recompile for GP2X) makes my traffic for the month of October (i.e. one day) pass my total traffic for the month of September (30 days) within a matter of hours.
God knows what temperature gp32x.com is hitting right now. Strangely, though, my adsense hits/clicks read normal. I *knew* I should have released my other port so that I was in the No.1 spot on that site when Slashdot hit...
Re: (Score:2)
Nope... the run-up to pre-orders (2pm GMT yesterday) was quiet on my site and there was a slight bump in my graphs around and after 2pm, even though gp32x.com had trouble staying up. But the timing of the Slashdot post coincides exactly with a huge surge in traffic to my (pretty unrelated) site. I can't imagine the traffic that's headed their way at the moment.
MHz myth yet again... (Score:5, Funny)
I have a radio... It's capable of more than 10 GHz.
But why would I want a handheld syslog-viewer? (Score:4, Funny)
Joking, but it actually did take me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why on earth someone would want a handheld console of all things... I think we Unix geeks had dibs on that word before gamers. :)
I was about to order one, (Score:2)
It's 10:45 GMT, still earlier enough and the site is Slash Dotted! Thanks guys.
Why would you buy this? (Score:5, Interesting)
With the netbook you're getting something that will run most older emulators well, and a machine which is more usable for casual net use. I run a big stack of emulators for older consoles on an ancient Toshiba laptop (with a mere Celeron 500) with no problems. With a 1.6GHz Atom, I'd guess Project64 (N64) and ePSXe (Playstation) work well... Anyone out there tried yet?
Andy
Re:Why would you buy this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you put it in your pocket? Does it play like a proper gaming controller? No? Then that's why. Personally I'll have this, the Eee and the DS, all for different uses.
Re:Why would you buy this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Good hardware, bad hardware (Score:4, Funny)
If you can make the "world's fastest console", shouldn't you host on at least a "world's somewhat resilient server"?
New toy (Score:2, Informative)
Missing option: US shipping? (Score:2)
Saw UK, but no US. Is that a feature, a flaw, or something to work around?
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.gbax.com/ [gbax.com]
This is by the same owner. Look at all the links for each country.
Re: (Score:2)
http://openpandora.org/worldmap.html [openpandora.org]
Actually I should have just posted this.
Am I the only one... (Score:2)
Who looks at that and thinks Sinclair variant? (or Timex/Sinclair for the US)
And no, for their time, those little computers were def not a joke.
On a par with the Wii? (Score:2)
On a par with the Nintendo Wii? Yeah, right. The Wii is at least twice as powerful as the original XBox. It also has a specialised CPU that came from the same project that gave birth to XBox 360's CPU and the PS3's Cell CPU.
People seriously underestimate the Wii because it's not HD and the large slew of shovelware.
Predicted in 2000 more or less (Score:2)
"[unrev-II] The DKR hardware I'd like to make..."
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion/0754.html [bootstrap.org]
"Consider a couple of these souped up devices given to each village in
Africa. Anyone with $1 billion for true development aid to 500,000
African villages? (This is just the cost of one unfinished dam or one
shut down nuclear plant.)
Consider millions of these devices airdropped into Iraq and Yugoslavia
-- instead of more expensive cruise missiles! Anybody got $1 billion to
spend on ensuring democracy with a true def
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OLPC is on the ropes, and it took a couple more years than I predicted, but here are the toymakers coming through for us with Pandora!
Compared to the OLPC XO-1, the Pandora:
- costs twice as much
- is available in even fewer quantities
- has no education-oriented software available
- has no education-oriented infrastructure in place
In what way is it a suitable alternate for an educational mission?
No shipping option for United States / America? (Score:2)
Has anyone from the U.S. ordered one, or do we just have to wait?
Tips and Tricks for ordering a Pandora (Score:2)
The box (Score:4, Funny)
With a name like that I am just wondering whether I should be opening the box. ;)
Bad luck... (Score:2)
Compare to the iPhone (Score:5, Insightful)
This is so like another console from a few years back (Gizmondo?) that looked like an old-skool gamers dream machine with GPS and whatever else thrown in the mix but ultimately it died a death as it really wasn't of interest to the mass market.
Gizmondo had a lockout chip to keep out homebrewers, which wasn't cracked until after the system was discontinued. Pandora, on the other hand, is designed without a lockout chip on purpose.
Also, its flexibility is its downfall - Joe public won't be able to work out what it is for - it's too much of an 'everything plus the kitchen sink' device.
So are the iPod Touch and the model with a built-in phone, but that's selling like hotcakes.
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I believe he's thinking of the GP32 [wikipedia.org] or the GP2x Wiz [wikipedia.org]. They have been an open gaming platform since their inception, and have achieved moderate popularity in Asia.
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But those aren't failures and are products of the same area/range. He do mean Gizmondo it seems, which is shit. I saw Gizmondo and DS and PSP in the same stores when released, but who on earth would get the Gizmondo and why?
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So are the iPod Touch and the model with a built-in phone, but that's selling like hotcakes.
I think you are going to learn about the value of advertising. :)
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Now if Google implemented their selection of SDL or whatever on Android .. ;D
Would be nice with a more standard platform for emulators and such on the Linux devices instead of multiple ones (I guess they are very easy to port to android anyway though.)
Re: (Score:2)
Right, well I'd rather run Ubuntu on my desktop PC than Maemo. Just to say that I'd consider Ubuntu more potent than a Linux distro made for an embedded device.
Any reason other than being a fanboy? A custom distro designed for a specific situation blows the socks of a generic distro, when its done right. This point is even more true for devices are that to the public where starting with something like the EEEs limited interface is much more useful to the general public than a full Ubuntu install
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No, it's not like Gizmondo, because that was closed. The GP32, GP2x, GP2x Wiz and Pandora are well known brands in certain areas and have plenty of software for them.
They are open and korean, and Nintendo have got very shitty coverage in Korea and the company responsive for selling Nintendo products there have been shit. I don't think these consoles are entirely unknown in Korea, just because you haven't heard of them or know any software for them don't make the case the same for everyone else.
Gizmondo look
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Re:Limited audience (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.gamerevolution.com/images/feature/gizmondo/flow_chart.gif [gamerevolution.com]
The biggest difference between the Gizmondo and the Pandora is that the latter is intended for home-brew only, and is certainly not aimed as a PSP killer. With that in mind, it's hard to see how the Pandora can fail, bring down a large electronics company, destroy a Ferrari Enzo, and lose millions of investors cash in quite the same way as the Gizmondo managed......
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With that in mind, it's hard to see how the Pandora can fail, bring down a large electronics company, destroy a Ferrari Enzo, and lose millions of investors cash in quite the same way as the Gizmondo managed
What? How was the Ferrari Enzo destroyed?
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.gamerevolution.com/features/gizmondo_bizarro [gamerevolution.com]
"Stefan Eriksson and a man known only as "Trevor" were driving a limited-edition Ferrari Enzo down the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, California at a relaxing 165 mph. As luck would have it, they hit a bump in the road and flew into a concrete utility pole, ripping the car in two."
It later turned out (during the trial of Erikson) that the car was driving at 199mph when it crashed (because they'd been filming the sp
Re:Limited audience (Score:5, Insightful)
But that is exactly it's market. It's a product for a community that already exists and that is already buying it, so it will be a success. Beating nintendo is not the goal, making a great device with features that a few thousand people want is enough of a success, from my point of view. I'm unsure whether it will make enough money to compensate the amount of time spent designing it, but not everything is about the money. I'm sure they actually love the device themselves, say.
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It does support USB host mode and SDIO for peripherals, though. (and Bluetooth, which is also on the N8xx series)
The N810 only has a Mini-SD slot (so no dangly bits even if there were mini SDIO cards) and AFAIR only acts as a USB client.
Re:No GPS.. (Score:4, Informative)
Nope, N810 can also act as a (non-powered) USB host, and also has Bluetooth (I'm quite confident, since it talks to my Bluetooth keyboard pretty darned well :-).
N810 has a single rather than dual SDHC slot (the N800 had dual slots, not sure why they dropped that in the N810), slide-out keyboard (rather than clamshell design), and same resolution screen, but lacks the gaming controls and DSP.
N810 runs Maemo Linux (with GTK+ graphics), though I believe a port of Ubuntu is available or in-work, and is about the same price. Looks about the same size.
Biggest difference to me (other than N810 being a third generation device shipping in volume) - N810 has an official Palm Garnet emulator that runs all those games I bought in my Treo days. It'd be a Good Thing is Access would port that to Pandora as well.
They look pretty similar to me. N810 topped Amazon's Electronics best seller list a while back. If Pandora is well-implemented and can get some marketing behind it, it could do well. I hope so - Choice Is Good.
due to cost. (Score:3, Informative)
Why oh why can't a device that looks like a potential competitor for a N810 have GPS built-in?
It would raise the bill of materials unacceptably. But it does have two USB ports and two SD slots that could probably be used for SDIO. Enthusiasts will find which GPS dongles work best with Pandora.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
this is a completely open source project, is there so far any good open source gps program?
i've seen a few nice programs that work with bitmap maps from various sites, but those maps become huge, so it's useless on a large scale.
if a good opensource gps program does exist, porting it to the pandora, and attaching a gps receiver shouldn't be so hard
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Yeah, I don't have much need for a GPS either (It's not like I leave my appartment very often anyway), and those who have probably already have one or can get it in another device (say in their car or phone.)
Why would all devices have to have a GPS?
Re:What about... (Score:4, Informative)
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At what voltage is that? How much battery time would say 10 2700 mAH R6 NiMH batteries add?
I'm quite sure someone will built their own battery package for better battery life.
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Yeah, because everybody who's into technology is a fat ugly smelly loserly git. That's easily explained by the fact that you have to sell your coolness to the devil to know how to use vi.
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damn you got your vi skills cheap. i had to sell my coolness, my sense of humour and my dead sexy body... i got ripped off.
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I have no acne and I'm not fat.
I may not be a trendsetter or look good, but neither of these two are true.
And yeah, in the technology area we kind of are.
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Of course that's of little concern to me because I signed up for their newsletter so I'd receive notification when it becomes available. Worked really well and now I'm out 300 Euros for a Pandora, some gear and a donation to a Pandora Free Software fund.
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When I checked my mail I think it was about 6 hours after they sent out the notification, but I still got a unit :)
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It's not a cell phone. Camera's are overrated.
But you can run a VNC connection to your computer and use the built in mic to run Skype. Or your favorite VOIP program. There are plenty of other free and open source ones, so you probably don't need the VNC connection.
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No. Anonymous remailers In Soviet Russia on Netcraft servers run you!