Talk:Pandora (computer)

Forum post references

Could somebody please convert the forum post references in the wiki to real citations, so it doesn't reference another wiki? Thanks. atomicthumbs‽ (talk) 03:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

First for N64?

This is claiming the Pandora will be the first to be powerful enough to run N64 emulators. This is incorrect; The PSP has a port of Daedalus that apparently runs several games well. 65.184.147.182 (talk) 19:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The PSP system software requires all executables to be signed by Sony. Which licensed publisher has used the emulator to port one of its games and release it on UMD or PlayStation Network? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 17:12, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

True and, nonetheless, absolutely irrelevant. The point of replying to a comment is to comment on it, not to argue a completely different point. What you mention could very well be used to defend the Pandora if someone was attacking it but the OP is only mentioning the Pandora is NOT the first portable console to have a N64 emulator and this is true. --eduo (talk) 21:42, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

StrmnNrmn's Daedalus is not at all a fully functional emulator. It's more likely a proof of concept, and its development has been apparently discontinued at v13 long ago. It's a port from an N64 emulator designed for PC. It does NOT run at full speed on PSP, and has many graphical glitches, slowdowns, and limited compatibility (even if it is the best N64 emulator on PSP). If the Pandora can run a full speed N64 emulator, it will become the first handheld device to do so properly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.56.15.59 (talk) 23:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

It is true that in theory the PSP is powerful enough to emulate the N64. You need custom firmware to run Daedalus, which is a very buggy n64 emulator that is still in the experimental stages.

But you guys are being kind of silly because the Nintendo DS is basically a glorified portable N64 with an extra screen. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.15.166.113 (talk • contribs)

Saying the DS is a portable N64 is like saying the Pandora PDA is a portable Xbox. The architectures are completely different to the point that porting isn't just a recompile. The point of Pandora is that it comes with custom firmware. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 00:46, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

To "unsigned|75.15.166.113" Please argue about our ideas but stop personnal attacks. Don't talk about silliness, we are not talking about the same thing. Emulating a machine is NOT the same as comparing its architecture or performances with the host platform . Nintendo DS will probably *never* be able to emulate a N64. But it offers comparable performance with code written for it (ie Mario 64 DS). That's the difference between "to port" and "to emulate". Please verify your informations about emulation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.65.23.142 (talk) 15:36, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Article needs to be cleaned up.

I'm not trying to advertise the Pandora; rather, I'm attempting to create a Wikipedia article on it.

It's not vaporware, it's coming out in March or April. Engadget did an article on it, and it has significant differences from any handheld game console ever produced.

I intend to add more to the article (proper references to the actual forum posts, more information, etcetera) over the next few days, but I'm extremely busy at the moment. atomicthumbs‽ (talk) 06:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I've attempted to make the article more objective --90.194.112.221 (talk) 17:17, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Over the next day or so I'm going to remove the citations that are forum post links. These aren't largely acceptable according to Wikipedia:Verifiability. If there isn't anything more reputable that comes out then I'll remove the unsourced information altogether.

I'm not attacking the device itself, I just worry about verifiability. Since the release of the product is only supposed to be a couple months away it won't be long until this information can be re-added. Gh5046 (talk) 07:48, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I finally got around to removing it. Please do not re-add it until more valid information is released. Postings on forums and wikis are not good sources. Engadget and other sites references those same forums and wikis, so they are not any more valid. Gh5046 (talk) 23:49, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The technical issues are proyects of the designer. I mean in the article you shoult put "estimated hardware" or something like that. If you make a citation on a forum with the developer it will be Ok because you are talking about estimations. Plus you can see some demos of software in the account of the developer on youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/MWeston2. Plus if you CITATE THE DEVELOPER you have a DIRECT CITATION no matter if it is con a web page, newspaper, forum, book, etc. Otherwise you could not citate to others (like some companies) who officially post news on their forums. They also have an updated Wiki with the harware of the pandora. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.66.68.59 (talk) 02:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It's still a forum, it's not a press release. The only actual pictures that have been released have been of a PCB, which doesn't have the chips on it. It's an unfinished product, let it be finished and have the article contain real information, not estimates or guess work. Gh5046 (talk) 17:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Err you do know the people posting on those forums are the people who are actually making this device don't you? What could be a better source than that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.242.174.115 (talk) 01:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Something that isn't on a forum. Gh5046 (talk) 01:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

This is what you get when you have people insisting on the letter of the law without realizing the conditions under which it was adopted. But hey, we've got the official site which links directly to the forums, so no worries. Tcaudilllg (talk) 13:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you read just a little further down on the page mentioned, you have WP:SELFPUB, which seems to me to apply directly to this situation. You have a "questionable" source (a forum) where there is information posted by developers about their own product, and as far as I can tell fulfills all the guidelines of WP:SELFPUB. I can understand wanting to use only the best sources, but in this case those forum posts are the best sources we have.70.230.2.66 (talk) 21:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I concur. You just are not being logical. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.17.212.38 (talk) 06:13, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Open source

It will _NOT_ be opensource in any way beyond the OS (or maybe even parts of the OS, if there'll be closed kernel drivers), the hardware itself is _NOT_ open source! So it's not "fully" opensource! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.178.125.223 (talk) 16:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

O Rly? Since you don't work for the people making the system or the SOC you have no idea, so stop speaking like you do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.39.247.100 (talk) 14:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You do realize that there are pretty much no open source systems on the market by your definition, right? It seems much more resonable to assume that everyone will read "fully open-source" as the software being fully open source, which will be the case from the sources I've seen.70.230.2.66 (talk) 22:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The term "open source hardware" is already defined. If you sell an "open source console", people will expect open source hardware, not open source software. 87.178.116.179 (talk) 13:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know a whole lot about this system, but I went ahead and changed the article to say the software is open source so it wouldn't be confused with open source hardware. That was the whole issue, right? --Eruhildo (talk) 17:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Then what is the word for a gaming PDA designed to run free software, including a free operating system? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 17:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I've never seen source code of hardware. Can I compile it with gcc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.192.93.76 (talk) 13:12, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Hardware has source code. See Verilog. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 21:28, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that it's not open source hardware. There have been no statements by the development team that the hardware will be closed source. On the other hand they have not explicitly said this to be the case, but open source software tends to assume drivers as part of the software. (we saw differently from Creative recently, but they aren't open source anyway).

Might as well seek clarification though. Tcaudilllg (talk) 06:31, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

The Pandora will use the TI OMAP platform, which is closed 'source'. Also, OMAP uses PowerVR technology which they licence, and which is closed source. The 3D drivers on the Pandora will be a binary, without source code available. So the hardware is defintely closed, and the OS partially. Therefore I'll change the wording a bit. Jalwikip (talk) 08:31, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

To claim that the OS is not fully open source because of a binary blob driver is to claim that no modern Linux distro is fully open source. There are many closed source binary drivers for Linux. Pandora's OS will be Linux based, and fully GPL compliant. Candre23 (talk) 11:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Open Source hardware is being supplied with the blue prints so I could start selling my own, under a different name, if I wanted to. I do think it is fair to say it is an open developement platform though.

The "Arduino," is and example of Open Source hardware.

900 MHz

Somehow we should mention that zodttd has reported it running stably at 900 MHz —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.127.175.78 (talk) 16:53, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

What source do you plan to cite? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 17:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

just after a fast search find a cite

http://zodttd.com/blog/zodttd/status_report_time_b-50_sid-6210576b47684b492b629e96fa788c31.html

--Andri12 (talk) 22:18, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The link is broken. Besides, it takes a lot to convince Wikipedia editors that a given blog is a reliable source. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 00:52, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

How about that one? Besides zodttd is a reputed developer within the community and one of the earliest to have had access to a Pandora. --89.127.175.78 (talk) 08:23, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

"Unbrickable" design?

I think this might mean that unlike many other devices it won't become corrupted if there is an error when updating the firmware...? Is this the case? I'm sure there must be a more suitable way of saying it though? Barrylb (talk) 03:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It might just be a fallback bootloader in mask ROM that loads a rescue image from an SD card. (The PSP supports something similar if a battery with serial number -1 is attached.) But we might as well wait for more verifiable information about the Pandora PDA's bootloader to become public, which should happen this summer when the product comes out. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 14:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

(after more research) In fact, that's how it works.[1] But I'm hesitant to use that source in the article because it's a forum post, despite that it was posted by gp32x.com staff. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 20:22, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Internal Bluetooth

Hardware developer MWeston confirmed that the "easter eggs" on his personal Pandora site were accurate and the Pandora will indeed have an integrated Bluetooth radio. Only his forum post[2] exists as proof at the moment, so I didn't include a confirmation link. If you read the whole thread[3] though, it's clearly not a joke.Candre23 (talk) 12:25, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Big/little endianness

The text says "The Pandora will have an existing software base due to having a package manager that will accept Debian packages for the ARMEL (little-endian ARM) architecture." However, TI specs claim the chip used is Big Endian. Jalwikip (talk) 08:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

That was a typo, it is LE. PlopperZ (talk) 14:15, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Preorder / ship date

Lead developer Craig Rothwell has stated that preorders would only take place when the final units are within about four weeks of shipping.ref1ref2 I would love to put the refs in the actual article, but Wikipedia still has a problem with forum posts as sources, even when those posts are made by the people involved.Candre23 (talk) 21:33, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

DAMN!!!

Parden my french, but this thing is baddass. Is there any exact release date?-- 12.185.250.67 (talk) 04:31, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Not exactly, but some finalized consoles are supposed to be taken to trade shows in August. As the post above says, preorders will start about four weeks before everything is ready to be shipped, which will probably be some time shortly after August. There's a list of official forum dev team updates over here, so you know where to look if there's any news... Esn (talk) 22:14, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Battery life

The battery life estimates on this page are extremely vague.

I realize this is by design since we don't know anything exact but there should be a little more information IMHO. It is easy to glean for instance that video battery life can potentially be quite a lot more than 10 hours even with brightness at 100%. I know this because PMP Player Advance on the PSP can easily decode 2000kbps h.264 video with 192kbps MP3 audio while running at only 66mhz. The resolution is 480x272, so the pixel data is only about one third of what it might be on the Pandora. So lets figure 3x66mhz just to get a wild guess how much performance would be needed to do something similar with higher-quality video, and you get 200mhz... A recent official Pandora blog entry noted that it gets about 8.5 hours of runtime at 500mhz with full brightness and sound on, with no power management. At less than half that (200mhz) battery life should be 15 hours, easily.

Besides this, the battery life at the stated speed (600mhz on this wikipedia entry) won't be anywhere near 10 hours. Maybe 8 at best considering it only gets 8.5 at 500mhz. But for old emulators and simple programs, such high speeds won't be necessary and 10+ hours should be easily attained.

What I suggest is that the battery life section is split up. It currently says:

"Approximately 10 hours of runtime for video / general applications and 100 hours for music playback"

More accurate would be:

Battery life:

• Games - Between 5 and 10+ hours depending on how demanding the game is
• Video - At least 10 hours
• Music - At least 100 hours

This amount of information is important since battery life is a major consideration for someone considering a purchase, or in this case, a pre-order. If there's no objections I'll go ahead and add this information in the near future. 76.10.137.127 (talk) 03:02, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

The problem with including your information is that no more specific estimate of runtime is verifiable against any remotely reliable source. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 01:12, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Price

What is the current price of the consoles in USD? Wiki131wiki (talk) 19:55, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

The pandora is not a released product, so there isn't a "current price", but the announced price is about $330. But generally prices of products have no place in Wikipedia articles anyway. Mahjongg (talk) 23:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

How many shoulder buttons?

How many shoulder buttons are there? Are there only two (R and L)? or is there 4 (like a Playstation controller)? Akadewboy (talk) 13:57, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Considering the shape of the device and the number of buttons available on the main face, I would presume only 2. Just a guess CompuHacker (talk) 21:33, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I can confirm 2 on the official site: find the photo at the upper right, and click #4. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 21:57, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

What do you think the chances are that that button contains two individual buttons :/? CompuHacker (talk) 07:33, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean that each shoulder button has two individually addressable sensors so that it acts like a 1-dimensional D-pad? Not likely, or the blog, forum, or wiki would have mentioned it by now. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 12:22, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There are only 2 should buttons, this has been confirmed on the gp32x forums. However, the SoC board has exposed connectivity for someone to hack shoulder buttons or a rocker switch if they want to. If there is a game that requires extra buttons, the numerical buttons at the top of the board can be mapped and are easily acccessible while playing the game. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 15.219.153.74 (talk) 05:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Website and SD memory card question

Firstly I feel that in the infobox the website specified it is http://www.openpandora.org
Secondly I feel that the SD memory card spec should be more clear it says 64GB i assunme this means combined but someone could interpret it as each.
I would make these changes myself but I suck with wikicode. Xor24 ^{talk to me} 00:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Specifications into prose

I strongly disagree with the recent request to turn the specifications section into prose. Having it be in list form makes it a lot more concise and I believe more useful. I can see no benefits to turning it into prose. Esn (talk) 01:54, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. As I understand it, expressing specs in a bulleted list is the industry standard. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 12:13, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, for a catalogue. Take a look at any of our better console articles to see how hardware can be discussed without lazily resorting to bullet points. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:55, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that a list is more efficient. I go here to obtain facts (with all due reservations) and I do not go here to find samples of elegant use of English language. As for the sniping comments about lazily resorting, please remember to assume good faith and please avoid such negative comments about contributors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.164.176.22 (talk) 20:46, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Bah. It wasn't addressed at contributors, it was addressed at contributions. "More efficient" is what the infobox is for. Re-tagging. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:14, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

How do you make an allegement against a contribution without also criticising the contributor? Bah's above notwithstanding I attempt to maintain good faith. Still. --14:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.164.183.103 (talk)

Criticism section

While reliable sourced criticisms and controversies can be included in this article, criticism sections themselves are generally discouraged. See WP:NPOV and WP:CRIT for further information on criticism and controversy sections. Mahjongg (talk) 17:45, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The sentence "one of the prototypes is a board with several major chips on it" seems to suggest that only pictures of partly populated boards are available.

This isn't the case, it is easy to find a (Mark 1) board that is fully populated. like this one: [4]

The only functionality that is missing from this board is the WiFi module.

There are also pictures available of the MK2 (red) PCB, but I have not found any pictures of a populated board (yet), but note that de WiFi module is changed into a discrete chipset.

Mahjongg (talk) 19:43, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

"In general, making separate sections containing negative evaluations with the title "Criticism" is discouraged by some editors, although there is no consensus on the issue."

Since criticism sections appear all over Wikipedia, even in FA's, I can't imagine worrying about them unless there is a strong consensus against them. APL (talk) 20:00, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Any FA with a criticism section these days is likely to be downgraded. Criticism sections are almost always pits of unsourced, weaselly ranting. I've yet to see an article where a criticism section was the most appropriate solution. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:12, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

None of the supplied criticisms are factually accurate. The above specifications are correct and have been verified by the dozen or so developers who posses actual Pandora boards. Pictures and video of the final, fully populated, fully functional, production-ready PCB are available on the manufacturer's website. Pictures and video of the actual LCD and a rapid-prototyped version of the case are also present. The Pandora runs a customized version of Linux and follows all necessary requirements of the GNU GPL. Licensing of user-created programs is, of course, up to the users who create them. The internal financial administration of a private corporation falls well outside the scope of a Wikipedia article. Allegations of failure of teh GP2X as a Linux-based handheld are both inaccurate and irrelevant. Criticism section removed again. Further trolling will be reported. Candre23 (talk) 22:38, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I just tagged the criticism section as original research, and waited for someone else to decide whether or not to delete it. It was also full of errors concerning the use of spaces after comma and punctuation marks. Hopefully the poster will not try to edit it in again, as I saw it quite useless. NilsH (talk) 16:31, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Out of date information?

"Next batch is going to be available for pre-order at the end of December, 2008[2] with a shipment around March, 2009[3]. "

This is unlikely to still be true, but I hesitate to remove cited information. These dates were set when a November 30th ship date was still assumed for batch one. This has been postponed until at least late December, more likely January sometime.

I'm sure Craigix has said that he's not taking any more orders (even for spares in batch 1) until the first batch has fully shipped with no problems.

I'm not sure how to state that in the article, though. APL (talk) 18:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Recent revert

I can't tell if this is a more subtle attempt at the vandalism we've been seeing this week, or an honest, good-faith edit, but I reverted it anyway because it's false.

1) Only orders from the british store (UK and USA) were refunded.

2) All posts from the developers have indicated a ship date of January or February.

APL (talk) 19:06, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Hoax?

Should the article be edited to include information that Pandora is a possible hoax? It seems more and more likely every day. Take a look at http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=46180&st=315 .. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.78.184.12 (talk) 14:24, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

If you can find an authoritative source that says Pandora is a hoax, then go for it. Blog posts are only acceptable when they are undeniably posted by an expert with insider knowledge. APL (talk) 15:46, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you'd think it was a hoax. If it was all a suprisingly elaborate hoax he would have cut and run after the first set of payments. It would be silly to refund everyone's money and beg them to re-pre-order if you were just planning on ripping them off.

If it was a hoax it would be the most ridiculously poorly planned one ever.

Far more likely that it's a small business struggling to stay alive. The reason it seems a bit unusual is that most businessmen would have given up by now. APL (talk) 15:46, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I edited the page with information regarding the true situation with the delays (the latest delay was by no menas the first delay, initially the console was supposed to be released before last summer as you know if you have been following the development). It's true that it's not correct to mention the project being a "hoax" yet, I think it is needed to investigate further how the financial side of the project has been handled before that can be said. 62.78.184.12 (talk) 16:47, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that you fully understand what the word "hoax" means. Even if you found out that Craigix was corrupt and betting 85% of the Pandora money on the horse-tracks, that would not mean that the project was a hoax. Possibly not even a "Scam". Just a horribly run business that failed. APL (talk) 17:16, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Quite possible, actually (I am not a native english speaker). I really hope they manage to complete this project, but it always makes me suspicious when a project is delayed for the reasons this one is.62.78.184.12 (talk) 17:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh. Sorry, I always tend to assume people are native english speakers. 'Hoax' typically involves a prank. If they had never intended to create a console and were faking everything it would be a "Hoax". Although "hoax" tends to imply a sort of playfulness. Now that money has changed hands the word "Scam" might apply.

But personally, I think it's pretty clear that they're at least trying to make a console. So I don't think it's a hoax or a scam. (Those words imply that they're not making a console but intentionally creating the illusion of one) But there's a still a chance it might be a failure. I hope not. They're already got my money. :-) APL (talk) 20:43, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok, not a hoax really, but a vaporware for sure, don't you agree? (posted by user 189.243.60.236)

"vaporware"? do you desperately want it to become that, by applying the old "wishful thinking" and "self fulfilling prophecy", or are you just cynical? Mahjongg (talk) 23:52, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

According to our article on Vaporware, it's not vaporware if it "outwardly demonstrate[s] regular, verifiable progress in production". Pandora seems to be making progress. It has suffered a number of delays, and many of the early estimates were obviously not thought through well enough and were overly optimistic. So in those ways it's like vaporware, but it's only vaporware if there's no indication that progress is being made. In the case of Pandora there's every indication that development is going forward and that the product will be released. APL (talk) 04:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Duke Nukem Forever regularly updates its progress, even if it is every 5 years. I don't believe we will see it though.

Damn you Dietrich!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.192.246.138 (talk) 23:27, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

More disinformation.

I've reverted an edit trying to claim (uncited) that Pandora's initial run had been cut in half, and that people only received partial refunds. In fact, a large portion of people (Credit Card orders from UK and USA mostly) were given full refunds (In British Pounds) and asked to re-order if they still wanted a Pandora. It was recently announced that they'll only manufacture the ones that have been paid for by the (still non-finalized) manufacturing date, so perhaps that's what the editor was thinking. Or perhaps he was just yet another hater trying to add in false information. APL (talk) 14:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Eighth generation status

Can someone please cite a reliable source that indicates the Pandora will be an eighth-genreation console, at the moment it is completely subjective. For the time being I have removed this claim in line with the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy.

It's absolutely not 8th generation. It's also absolutely not 7th generation either, which it's tagged as. Not being a console means it doesn't even belong anywhere near those tags. Being able to run emulation doesn't qualify it either, otherwise every computer in the last ten years or more qualifies to some degree or other. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.4.83.207 (talk) 11:08, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Removed Vaporware link

Removed, see unofficial blog, there is obvious progress being made. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.215.216.81 (talk) 15:20, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Some one added it in again. I took it out. 90.194.119.248 (talk) 18:25, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Why is the Pandora not an example of Vaporware? The argument "obvious progress being made" does not count. There was always progress being made on "Duke Nukem Forever" as well. There were many screenshots and videos, and the game was always "close to release", yet it was never released. Same with the Pandora. Check out the Wikipedia article on Vaporware, and you will find that the Pandora matches the description. In fact, it may well match the "Obsolete on delivery" section, seeing how the claim that it is the most powerful gaming handheld is already highly questionable. I vote to add a sentence to the "Development History" section stating "The Pandora is a possible example for Vaporware." --Ruebezahl (talk) 05:34, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

"Vaporware is a term used to describe a product, usually software, that has been announced by a developer during or before its development, if there is significant doubt whether the product will actually be released."

Pandora is super delayed, but with parts in hand, it's difficult to claim a significant doubt whether the product will actually be released.

But that's irrelevant.. It's data synthesis. If you have a reputable source that describes Pandora as vapor, add it, and cite it. Otherwise leave it off. APL (talk) 15:59, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, forum posts are only valid sources when they're posts undeniably made by knowledgeable sources. APL (talk) 19:18, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Development Hell

The Pandora has been in limbo for a long time. All the way up to its release it has been redone. The board has been revised several times (see No videos, no pics, but a very comprehensive Status Report :)). The key mat was revised a few times (see Mixing up buttons). The case was revised (see The last missing pieces are coming together). If you click through many of the blog posts you will find a ton of revisions, and many of these were revisions done in the "manufacturing" or "mass production" stage. This isn't even the same product people were shown when they "pre-ordered" it. It deserves some sort of link to similar products. It easily falls under the "Development Hell" category.

"'Development hell' is media-industry jargon for a film, television screenplay, computer program,[1] concept, or idea becoming and remaining stuck in development and taking an especially long time to start production, if ever." Development Hell

Although vaporware is an interesting category.

"Vaporware describes a product, usually software, that has been announced by a developer during or before its development, if there is significant doubt whether the product will actually be released.[1]" Vaporware

As for calling either of these "wishful thinking" because someone believes the Pandora will or won't be released, the delay from pre-orders and the initial shipping estimate has been over a year.

"Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence or rationality." wishful thinking

Also, change the picture. It doesn't look like that. And, the blog posts are likely to change the links, but you can click on the blog here"141.225.22.73 (talk) 00:53, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

"Development Hell" definitely applies. I still maintain that vaporware doesn't. In any case, they're assembling the final prototypes today, so hopefully we'll have some good photographs soon. That'll make a good lead picture. No point going through the OTRS process so we can get a new picture for a week or so. APL (talk) 04:48, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think development hell is a reasonable page to link to, the page itself is primarily about undeveloped film rights, with a small section on software. This console is neither a film nor a piece of software. Nave.notnilc (talk) 21:15, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it applies, the reasons for the "delay" are too different from the other "development hell" examples. In this case its just a case of extremely unexperienced people taking on a much too large project while repeatedly announcing much too early what they have done (hence the quotes I used around "delay", it should have been obvious from the start that such a project would take this long). A project like the pandora simply has no equivalent, so its a learning experience for developers and enthusiasts alike. Mahjongg (talk) 22:36, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

No equivalent? What do you mean by that? I'm sure at some time in the past, capable Linux-powered handheld gaming/computing devices were designed, produced, and sold... --Gwern (contribs) 22:47 15 December 2009 (GMT)

"In the past" means discontinued, and discontinued means there's a dwindling supply of such Linux-based gaming PDAs on eBay and the like. Unless you're talking about either the GP2X (Pandora was made by GP2X fans), or something like the Archos 5 media player that runs Android OS, I'd like to see some citations about what you're so sure of. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 02:42, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

What I mean by no equivalent is that its not only an example of "open hardware", but one that tackles the design of a mainstream piece of consumer electronics by fans for fans, not by a commercial enterprise for fans (as the dingoo for example), and for which there is massive interest. As such its virtually unique. Yes there are much smaller scale open hardware game systems, like the uzebox [5], or the "pengachu" project [6] for a cheap wireless PDA. But these are much simpler projects that are much less ambitious, and with much less interest (pressure) from the community. Mahjongg (talk) 14:19, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Pandora is not Open Hardware. It is reasonably open, and it is hardware, but it is not "Open Hardware". APL (talk) 17:21, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

You are right, Pandora is created for, and with help and input of the (open source) community and pandora fan's but its not open in the sense they released the "blueprints" and schematics of the thing. Which makes the whole thing even more unique, as normally these are released so the community can also give technical support/feedback. So its a commercial undertaking, but one done by, with and for the fan community. Mahjongg (talk) 00:35, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Check the List of projects in development hell. Some of the projects are cars, and as far as I know they aren't related to film, games, or software. The exception being that you see them in those mediums. And relating to how "unique" the OpenPandora project undertaking is, many things are "unique" projects, but it is irrelevant to this particular discussion (see Ignoratio elenchi).74.177.51.148 (talk) 08:40, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't convinced by that argument ("its not a film") either, I'm only saying that the reasons for the delay in case of the pandora are different from those other systems. In the case of the pandora its because they were too unexperienced to estimate the time it would take, and too much under observation and pressure from the community to not voice such an absurdly early release date. That is common in open source software projects, but not so in hardware projects. In that sense Pandora's project was unique. Whether or not to compare that to "development hell" is still debatable. A real "development hell" situation normally has different reason for the delay, (or even cancellation) and is normally undertaken by experienced people who still fall into the trap of not knowing in which direction to develop in (constantly changing what the product should be) or slowly realizing they are developing the wrong (unsell-able) system. Except for small details the Pandora people knew exactly what they wanted to develop, and they also did not fail to develop the right system, it only took much longer than they thought it would. Mahjongg (talk) 14:18, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

"See also" Section

For anyone not familiar with See also sections, I recommend reading WP:SEEALSO. Based on that guideline, I have removed anything already referred to in the article. I also removed Open source hardware because I don't believe the Pandora is open source hardware, as well as Cambridge Z88, Dingoo, and Atari Portfolio as they don't appear to have any significance here, other than that they're all devices older than the Pandora and that the older two might have influenced the design of the Pandora. Lastly, I removed OmapZoom because (assuming the Pandora uses it) it should be included somewhere in the article instead. Eugeniu B +1 19:42, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Release, not yet.

Seriously. There are already three links on the page that contain the source for that information.

Shame on both of you for removing sourced, accurate information.

If you're not happy with exactly how explicitly the source is identified it would have been nearly as easy to add the footnote yourself. I'm not asking you to do research here, it would have required an honestly trivial effort to click the link, especially after I pointed out exactly what link was the source. (If it wasn't the obvious one to check, anyway.)

While I could understand it if it required a non-trivial amount of research beyond clicking a single link, in this case I honestly don't understand the motive for repeatedly removing that sentence. APL (talk) 04:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Er, I don't want to imply that I'm angry about the edits, or that I think it's a big deal, because it's obviously not. It was a single sentence and I fixed it. I just wanted to take a moment to express my puzzlement about the attitude that caused the problem. My post above might not have the right 'tone', It's supposed to be friendly, but questioning. APL (talk) 04:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Reliable sources?

Are any of the sources for this article reliable secondary sources? Or is this just company PR? Angryapathy (talk) 13:17, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, only the PocketGamer source is is an independent, reliable source. The rest are other from message boards (seriously? message boards?), youtube, or from the company-run site. Seems like a lot of undue weight for something that hasn't gotten much coverage in the media. Angryapathy (talk) 17:13, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

This issue was already resolved by a sysop here. atomicthumbs‽ (talk) 22:55, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but this article is 98% primary sources. No one else sees that as a problem? I think it is telling that this information is difficult to glean from independant sources. Angryapathy (talk) 13:12, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Telling in what way? If you could repeat that with less innuendo and more description of what the actual problem is, it'd be more helpful. Are you implying factual inaccuracy? Bias? NPOV problems? Notability concerns? Something else entirely? What? APL (talk) 16:55, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

(Note : Examples of Innuendo. "Are any of the sources..." You're not literally asking this question, because you could have simply counted the sources yourself. You're using a question to slyly imply something. "I think it is telling...", but then not describing what you think it tells you.) APL (talk) 16:55, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you wanted to enhance the article by better describing the notability, the Mention in "Game Developer's Magazine" is probably a good place to start. That's a pretty high profile industry publication. (Rip from the online version is here. Probably a copyvio.) I'm not exactly sure where to stick that in the article though. APL (talk) 17:00, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess I will be as specific as possible, so that editors are not confused by innuendo. I think the size of the article is disproportionate to the coverage in sources, and much of the article is undue weight. If an editor has to scrounge through message boards in order to find a good portion of information about a product, than that information is probably unnecessary. It seems like this article more original research for a product that might come out this year. Unless it gets postponed until next year. Or the year after that. The depth of coverage on WP is overblown in proportion to the impact of the product. It does not exist commerically, has gotten very little coverage, and has no signs of being mass-produced any time soon. Angryapathy (talk) 17:23, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

First of all, I highly doubt the Pandora will not ship this year. It obviously has taken more years than expected, but this year, Pandoras have already been shipped to developers. So technically it's already been released, but not to the general public. All the hardware and design has been completed, all anyone has to wait for now is for the mass production of the preordered devices. And if you're absolutely dying for more independent sources, just click here. 69 independent sources, how about that? But with the forum issue, so what? The developers sometimes like talking about their product on a forum where it will recieve more direct responses from the community than it would in a blog. And it's not like their word on a blog would be more reliable than their word on a forum. Lastly, I'm going to go ahead and ignore your last sentence. Sorafune +1 17:56, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

In fairness, those aren't really 69 independent sources. Many of them are repeats. (Different posts by the same source. Engadget.) and many of them are simply uncritical rehashes of whatever Craigix has said lately. APL (talk) 18:53, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that pruning back the article (As I think you're suggesting) makes sense here. Notability and undue weight are different policies.

If a topic isn't notable, then the article should be AfDed. If it IS notable, then WP:UNDUE doesn't seem to say anything about article length or depth, simply that if there are contrary opinions or minor details on a subject they should receive coverage relative to their significance.

In short, WP:UNDUE is about neutrality within an article. With the possible exception of the way the ship-dates are reported, I don't see any neutrality problems in this article, and I can't think of any contrary opinions that are being smothered by (for example) the depth of our coverage of the machine's specifications.

(If I'm still misunderstanding you, then perhaps this could describe what you think should be changed?) APL (talk) 18:53, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess what I am saying that for an article about Pandora, it is a great article. For a Wikipedia article, it's not a very good article, as the majority of the info is coming from primary sources. Primary sources are dangerous because they require some interpretation on the part of the editor, and the editor can sometimes cherry-pick the info they want to use, and borders on WP:OR.

That being said, this truly is an uncontroversial article, so the primary sources thing really isn't an issue there. The editors of this page have done a very good job of getting refs for information in the article, which is a good thing. But the article would greatly benefit from secondary sources as opposed to the primary ones used.

I would personally remove most of the technical specifications, as the product isn't released commercially yet. But I'm not a tech guy, and don't know my way around tech articles.

That's my two cents. Angryapathy (talk) 20:24, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I personally don't understand how cherry-picking info over other info would be dangerous unless the primary sources actually actively contradict themselves (and I don't think they do) or how doing so constitutes something similar to original research. Sorafune +1 21:03, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Cherry picking can be very similar to original research because you get to decide what the final message is. If the same reliable source says both X and Y, I can (correctly) report that the source is contradictory, but I could also report either X or Y. All three choices would seem completely legitimate to anyone who hadn't done the research themselves.

There has been some self-contradiction in the OP crew, most notably in regards to ship-times, but the article seems to mention both the original estimate, and one that's reasonably up to date, and a few of the ones in between. So I think that's allright. APL (talk) 23:10, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

History section

The second paragraph of the history section, except the first sentence, should be deleted. Now that the product has been launched, it is not necessary to say "so and so said in a forum it would be released on this date" and "so and so said that that was an optimistic estimate on a forum" and "so and so issued a revised estimate in a forum," etc. Honestly, I don't know if that level of detail was ever appropriate for an encyclopedia article. "[Date] has been announced for the launch of the product, but several announced launch dates have been missed, going back to [Earliest announced launch date.]" would have sufficed. Now it is just silly.140.163.0.5 (talk) 14:00, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

 Done I pared it down. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 22:12, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Has this been released yet?

I cannot find in this article a straight-forward answer to whether this console has been released to the public. Can anyone familiar with the sources help? Angryapathy (talk) 15:55, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

They're certainly shipped some units to customers. I've got one right here on my desk.

I don't know if they've caught up with their pre-orders yet. APL (talk) 16:55, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it certainly has been released. First shipments started on May 21st, 2010 (according to this timeline). There's a current status page. It currently (2012-07-31) says 4300 units were shipped and about 600 pre-orders are still left. The units are currently in stock. Since production moved to Germany, the production cost is larger than what the pre-orderers paid, but they are still fulfilling those pre-orders (at a loss), at a slow pace, by using profits from new sales to compensate for those losses. So ironically, if you order it now, you will get a unit in a matter of days, while if you pre-ordered four years ago, you could still be waiting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.58.41.49 (talk) 10:56, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

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