Thread: No competitors
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Karel Jansens's Avatar
Posts: 3,220 | Thanked: 326 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
#29
Originally Posted by tabletrat View Post
Which is a noble enough goal, and how things should generally be, but it isn't really how things get bought though.
Presumably if they don't sell enough of these or no-one ports any software across* the platform dies, like so many before it, don't they?

People that play games as a primary goal seem more obsessed about apperance from what I see, they have those big tower cases with blue lights everywhere, and useless gauges. Games machines in general come in a variety of colours, which people seem to clamour for. The PSP seemed to get more popular when they redesigned the case a bit.

It seems to be pitching into a market where people are more concerned with form than normal.

* Excuse my ignorance on the pandora, apart from your sig I have heard nothing about them, so I don't know if there is already the software or what they run.
As has been noted elsewhere, the Pandora's target "market" is the portable emulation scene, a wonderful and weird world (ask Arnim/Pupnik).

Then again, from discussions and polls it has become clear that many (if not most) see the Pandora as an UMPC/PMP/Itablet/games console, a variety of tasks which fits the hardware like a spray-on glove.

There have been discussions about the clumsiness/usefullness of the keyboard, all of which have been settled in favour of the current design (with even videos of ergonomic tryouts with mockups of the Pandora).

It is important to remember that the Pandora is very much like the OpenMoko project, in that it is designed almost from the ground up with intensive cooperation from and dialogue with the community. It will run Linux, it will be unbrickable and it will be extremely hacker-friendly, up to and including easily accessible solder spots on the motherboard for the terminally insa^H^H^H^H h4X0rz.

I've never hidden my preference for a "pure" tablet device, without keyboard and relying on HWR input only, but I've come to realize that Linux developers are either not interested in or don't have the skills to produce a mature HWR application and the physical layout of the N810 abhors me, so I'm going for a Pandora; it has the added benefit that the clamshell is in effect a screen cover on its own.
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Watch out Nokia, Pandora's box has opened (sorta)...
I do love explaining cryptic sigs, but for the impatient: http://www.openpandora.org/