That little banner on right side of this place is just for kicks there?

Smoku, while you're certainly doing great stuff with this project from technical point of view, you're definitely not half as good in "convincing people to join Your case". Maybe you just don't care for that, but then, how You expect enough people sending You real money (not only signing for pre-order), when times comes? IMO in such projects, good communication with participants (even ones that aren't directly developing, but, for example, "only" using and ordering device) is 50% of success.

Haven't You thought about someone volunteering communication with participants? You want 250 people to pre-order, I doubt You can achieve communicating with all of them, when talking with 20-30 start to fail in a way "do it my way and live with it, if not, I don't want Your business"

I'm not trying to be rude here - quite opposite, I'm offering help. No one is good on all "fronts", neither You alone can do all things Yourself.

Maybe You haven't noticed - you probably have not - but increased interest in CordiaTAB started when bunch of people, including me, advocated this on current pre-election "future for maemo.org" threads. Most of people didn't even knew about Cordia project, before that. Many of them, including very active ones, even thought that You've left community long time ago without any trace.

Be honest with Yourself, PR isn't Your strong point. Managing such a big project require *very* good communication, or it will fail. Just my little advise - use currently present interest and people willing to help, or latter You may complain about not having such good souls around

I have to second Estel here.

We all have our things we are good at and we defiantly have things we suck at.

I for one am pretty terrible to explain things, and my most active field "free" energy i see this all the time, brilliant people inventing things but they SUCK at trying to explain what they are doing..


in the case of this thread, i will say take the help, lets get more users on this, we all want more devices that run maemo, even meego with the nice Hildon-Desktop on top

And I third Estel.

This is an Open Source collaboration, isn't it? Then we should live by those ideals.

On the subject of GTFO from maemo.org, many here see this as a future direction of maemo.org, so even if you don't wish to frequent this place as much, others will and do, and will provide the strength in numbers required to make this project a success.

How realistic is it that if this device succeeds...

1. There will be another device after the Cordia Tab?
2. The one following the Cordia Tab has updated hardware?

While me and many others would like to support this project, there doesn't seem to be too much of a point if all we get is an outdated machine running open source software that may not have a future. However, if this can lead to a device with beast specifications then many would see it worthwhile. Would Smoku (or someone) be willing to work on device with customs specs?

i really want this project to be a success but for me and alot of other people out there we werent sold yet about jumping on tablet trend, if this is a 4" - 5" phone i would gladly preorder no doubt about it even if the specs is just a little better than n900... just my 2cents.

My thoughts exactly. I want to support this project but I have no need for nor do I want to carry around a tablet.

Think of it this way:

You may not care about carrying around a tablet, but if you like the project enough to want to support it then maybe you might make an exception. After all, the hardware will not change any time soon, but future ventures of this type will be greatly impacted by this first step.

That's why though I leave my Nook Color at home most of the time (and slowly hack the kernel clean,) I plan on getting the Cordiatab as early as possible and hauling it with me. Even displacing my N900 if necessary.

And maybe down the line, with more people involved and a higher profile a nice handset could be the target. Who knows. But it starts here.

I have to disagree a bit.
While you are right that communication is a big part of any product launch, this clearly isn't a "big" project. This is a community-driven Tablet intended for developers (as smoku states on the cordia tab page), for people who want a full linux/meego stack with hildon-desktop goodiness. This is for people who know exactly what they get - people like me.

I don't need great advertising, featuritis or adobe flash, i want a nice linux tablet playground. that's exactly what smoku is offering.

your arguments might become valid once this project goes beyond its intended developer target audience of 300 people, but for now, i think it's too early to expect a "professional", enterprisey product launch.

if you don't like that, just don't preorder.

i for one am grateful smoku pushes this forward, at high financial risk for himself (i doubt the factory will take back unsold devices). i'll definately get one of the first Cordia-Tab batches

Might not be the "future" but for me it's more about freedom, and what's more awesome then a OS for the people, by the people.

And if it's maemo or meego that doesn’t matter to me, i really just like the system, and really like hildon-desktop, and been really impressed about you customizers out there that take yours to a whole new level with all shorts of cool art work and such, just that alone makes it awesome instead of been confirmed as on Android or IOS, or for that sake the completely boring WP7 layout.... we should make the WP7 look just for us insomniacs, that will put you right to sleep.