Minor case update, wee button info
January 11, 2010A dump n’ run update from the frontlines, to break the eerie post-weekend silence.
Craigix: Just a little update to say the cases are still on schedule to be completed this week.
Jumpman: So the last “test” cases had all the technical problems fixed right? So these new test cases(rev.3), are only to improve on the finish quality right?
Craigix: Yes, this one is just a general clean up of a few things and a slightly bigger test run, it will be coming with keymats too so we can build up quite a few units.
Stapled to this bulletin, a nice morsel from Skeezix regarding the function of the Pandora logo button.
In pmenu mode, it returns to pmenu
in xfce mode, it pops up a menu with a few options, one of which is a handy searchable app list/launcher, among other things
it is configurable to launch other stuff if you want to muck with conf files
jeff
That’s not all folks… but it is for the moment. Stay tuned in the coming days for a minor flood of homebrew news.
Hooray!
Usual meaningless first post. Ooh Ooh! No-one has posted yet must get in there first, quick. I’ll read the article later. Nothing wrong with this of course. I’d do the same if I was lucky enough to stumble on a virgin post. Just jealous.
FGS! I’m a grown man. Look what the Pandora has done to me. Please hurry up and ship!
Better luck next time. Us grown men have to be competitive too, ya know. You’re not getting any younger, so you might as well act younger!
Or as they say you have to grow old but you never have to grow up
You’re only a man when you’re the last post though.
does pmenu support multitasking? (if not, what about panorama?)
also, if rev. 3 is nice enough, what can go wrong from this point on? I bet there’ll be some way to crash us into the dull of another Chinese holiday?
i’m so used to these delays, it would seem like a miracle if it would work out this time…
Linux supports multitasking. pmenu is just a program. I doubt it makes sense to have multiple copies running so it may not have been coded that way. It may be multi-threaded but I’m sure if the A8 supports this.
Time will tell. Murphy has not finished with us yet.
cpasjuste and dflemstr have both said that their frontends do not act as window managers in any way. Your launch an app, pmenu or panorama close to free up resources, and when the chosen app closes they reload themselves. This is the concept of a minimal launcher. Some apps may support loading into the background in some way, like and mp3 player, but that’s up to the application, not the launcher. The only way to have full multitasking is with a Window Manager like XFCE.
Panorama is no window manager, but it currently doesn’t close itself to preserve resources, because it’s still in development and I don’t want it closing on me every time I launch an app. I’ll add this ability later though.
And since both PMenu and Panorama *can* (but they will not necessarily) run on the frame buffer, multitasking becomes moot since you can’t have many programs running at once on the FB.
The scenario for multi-tasking is rather that a small X session is started (no desktop environment, only a basic WM) with Panorama as the only launched program, running on the “desktop” aka below all other windows. You start applications and they appear in front of Panorama, and you press the Pandora button to bring Panorama back to the front.
There might be other possibilities, as well; I’d have to look for more once I have a Pandora.
Panorama? Thought it’s called Pandorama
I’ve made that typo a LOT myself, so often in fact that I thought about renaming the application!
But the name remains Panorama, because Pandorama isn’t a real word and would be confusing to outsiders, especially if I port Panorama to other platforms (who knows; I might)
Damn great notice, epic suspense this week.
I know! Six on the sixth and then nothing for days. It’s just not healthy.
I was wondering what that Pandora button would be used for…
Pushing.
I think wqe have more pressing issues…
HAHAHA oh wow
We love to speculate
best case!
Right now we know they are shipping the next case on the 15th supposedly… then…
Case arrives Jan 20 and is approved on Jan 22.
Mass case production starts and batches of cases start shipping, Jan 30.
Cases of cases start to arrive in Texas Feb 5th.
Pandoras start getting built and tested, 4 weeks of receiving, building, testing and shipping.
The last ordered pandora is shipped on March 5th.
I think it will be hard to produce 1000 pandoras a week… SO this speculation is uncalled for and wrong.
But considering all the things we do know if there is any trouble with the case this whole timeline could slip at least 1 week for every case modification. Damn depressing but patiently waiting. AND OTOH if you are in the first 1000 you might get your Pandor by Feb 15th.
Under Two Months
Only one problem with your timeline. Chinese New Year (CNY) is Feb 14. Everything, and I mean everything, shuts down for two weeks for this very important holiday. No factory will be open during this holiday; it is an important tradition for everyone to go home to their family over this time.
So production will quite likely be interrupted by CNY. As well, I strongly suspect production of the entire case run will wait until the end of CNY as the factory will want to produce the entire run in one shot.
Don’t worry for this company Chinese New Year is on hold, until the case is complete.
lol right on time!
Wonder why they bother telling us that the Chinese factory is on time when they won’t find out that they are running late until a day or two after the deadline?
what the fuck happened to “2009 will surely be the year of the pandora?” This BEAUTIFUL GAMING CONSOLE is taking way too long to come out of THE FACTORY
Ouch, and I thought the delays were painful for customers. Won’t somebody think of Craig’s arse!
you can’t blame people for being annoyed at this point. If you knew how long this type of process takes (come on, they had to know that the first case would need revisions), then why even suggest that xmas 2009 is possible. Seriously.
noone’s blaming anyone, chill out
this is good news to hear, thanks guys
That post is kind of funny since you are answering to “nones” post.
Sorry Gruso! I’m not that way inclined.
Well….as much as we all like Craig there are few things to consider:
1) Craig already has his Pandora and we dont have ours
2) We’ve paid for the Pandora and haven’t received anything tangible
I can understand why people are getting a bit more than antsy about the state of the Pandora.
Looks like we’re going to miss my predicted ship date of Feb 29, 2010. Next predicted ship date, based on the about two months from today, is March 15, 2010.
BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH! That is when we will all learn the truth!
Gruic
I
im in ur commentz, fuckin’ with ur trollin’
The same thing that happened to “2008 will be the year of the pandora”. I think we’re up to “Seriously dude, 2010 will be the year of the Pandora or my name isn’t John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt!”
Ya, there will be more delays..
there always is ….
Case not just right. Not enough of some tiny part. Shipping delay is guaranteed to compound on whatever it is. Something everyone thought was done and sitting in a warehouse is actually being ordered just now (a particular chip, the styluses, batteries, cables, speakers, jacks, knobs, shields, LEDs, buttons, LCD’s touch part is somehow ordered separately, another board revision, some lawsuits, etc…). All of this could delay it. God knows if they don’t use shipping confirmation to save a few hundred dollars. Could be made even worse if the best testers, the public, find an unbelievably dumb flaw. You would have thought they would be ordering these things in parallel, but I guess when people ordered it was actually in the conceptual stage… No one is getting what they saw in the picture when they ordered, but it is close, I guess. Better than the changes made to the “crunchpad”, joodoo, or whatever it wants to be called.
Picture the scene. Its Xmas 2010 and your Pandora has finally arrived after much delay. You open the box and…. it’s a DS!
Picture the scene 2. Its Xmas 2010 and your Pandora has finally arrived after much delay. You open the box turn it on and….You’ve got the dud!
Picture it, Sicily 1932.
The only really concrete thing is that now more powerful machines came on the market for renowned manufacturers.
I hope nobody will screwing things again with delays or then I will be tempted with those new machine like Viliv S5 that can actually run common OS like XP/Win7/Ubuntu very well.
Yeah yeah, a numbstick is cool etc. etc. but I don’t only aim to emulate old stuff with my Pandora.
Maybe if they make a pandora mark ii at some point it wouldn’t be necessary to change the case – or not very much anyway. That might speed things up a bit I guess.
Wouldn’t it make sense to fly somebody’s ass to China (like Michael or Craig) to stand at the business end of the injection molding machine for a day or 2 and work with them to sort out problems “on the fly” and get a leg on with this whole process… I realise China isn’t the kind of country you just saunter into and paperwork is required but at this rate it would be quicker than all this crazy posting stuff to Germany thing???
stop me if im wrong…
I don’t think any company would have the effort to do that. Afterall.. time is money.
I agree, time is money… Im not just thinking of us when i said fly out there, Im thinking of the case company… the little guy who spends several hours setting up the machine to produce a handful of cased and then spends more time taking it apart again, cleaning up the molds storing it all, then somone else posts them, then the guy sets up the machine to carry on with something else… then they wait… then the cases are rejected… then the molds are dug out of storage and altered and the man takes the machine apart again and cleans up the other companies molds only to set up ours and produce a handful of components and the whole thing starts again…
I know in reality at this stage no one is gonna fly there (again perhaps) but you would think it beneficial to all sides to to get the process running as fast as pos.
Full steam ahead is where the big dollar$ are!
What would probably be more sensible is to have a core developer on the team who actually lives in China, is expert with the design and needs, can take detailed photos, communicate with the devs in other countries etc.
I hope cost is not the only reason they are not doing that (or people will get crazy)…
What we need now while waiting is a new video from ED, Craig, or Mweston. Pretty please?
I just figured it out!
Craig, ED and Mweston are all canines (nice fluffy ones or teeth baring killing machines – you choose).
They’re working in dog years! If one human year = 7 dog years then 1 human month = 14 dog months.
Oh, hang on that’s the wrong way around. If they were dogs then it would get delivered 7 times more quickly.
Thus, we must be the dogs and they’re our masters – hence everything is 7 times slower.
Woof, bark, growl, slobber (that’s dog for “2 more months”
couldnt resist but the only thing I hear from you is “Bark bark bark bark bark!”.
LAST TWO MONTHS FOR THE WIN!!!!
Jippy!!!