Pandora Open-Source Netbook/Console Arrives Next Month

Umm. Cool? But, why?

The price of this device will be a deciding factor for many and alas, the Achilles heel for this little device. This device is far too expensive at nearly $500 which could be easily spent on several other devices.

If this device was $200-$250 It would be gone like free hotcakes.

For the price of this, I'd rather buy two PS Vita's and give one away.

Cool, but they have already shipped a few units actually. The initially run had some quality issues and there weren't too many of them. Considering though that it's now outpowered by a cheaper device with a capacitive touch screen from Archos (like the G9 80 or even the older Archos 70) it's not as appealing as it was even a year ago.

4 years too late. My android phone is faster and it's a bottom of the barrel model. Newer phones have dual core, Nvidia dedicated graphics, HDMI, Wifi N, more ram. Plus with the exception of some geeks, who wants Linux on their portable. Android/iPhone, goto apps store, install. This thing you'll have to compile some things, untar/'gz packages, all kinds of crap no one wants to do just to use an app.

Sorry guys, but this sucks. 4 years ago when you announced it, it seemed like a great idea. Now, you're outdated.

At almost 500 I can think of better alternative to waste some money on.

Not in exactly the same league, package-wise, but the RaspberryPi will outperform this for $35. You will of course require a case, keyboard, monitor etc. But that has a faster process & gpu and great scope for modification. I remember really wanting the pandora when it was first talked about, but now it feel irrelevent. I'd take it for $100-130, I suppose...

I will buy one . . .
When they double the specs and half the price.

Sorry, but it's not gonna sell. It can't.

The old catch 22. You need to sell a boat load to bring the price down and you need to bring the price down before you sell that boat load; ant quite literally so as they prob. arrive on a boat via container from China :-)

Why would you buy this with things like the Transformer Prime sitting in the same price range. Because it has Linux? How long will it take for someone to hack Linux onto a Prime with a quad core CPU and top notch graphics?

I may have just become a thumbs down target - :^(

Seems to me like it's suffering from an identity crisis that's making it more expensive then it's usefulness.

Years too late for me too... That is, I wouldn't have spent that money for those specs now. 3 1/2 years ago I put my money in and hopefully I'll finally see something for it.

better quad core phone than this..

What a waste of a fancy name..

Lawsuit from pandora.com in 3...2...1...

More like lawsuit from Greece for ruining their mythological name (and since they are in bad need of funds to waste). No offence to anyone.

It's got 512MB of RAM now. That's as much as it can handle. There was talk about replacing the SoC with something better, but before their population factory in Texas screwed them over they bought thousands of the current one. Need to use up those before moving on to something new, unfortunately.
For those saying that it'll "never sell", it has, it is, it will. What most people seem to keep forgetting is that this isn't Nintendo or Sony needing to sell a million units before it becomes a success, this was 4 guys building a device they wanted: minimal overhead and mostly off the shelf parts means R&D costs were fairly low. Unlike Nintendo which is a failure if it isn't selling tens of thousands of units a week, the Pandora only needs to do that once in its entire lifetime to be a commercial success: ten to twenty thousand units is paltry compared to the mass of the internet.
Pardon me for using an age old rhetoric, but if you have no problem using touchscreen keyboard and game controls and can think of no reason why anyone might possibly want the features the Pandora offers which are not available from any other system currently on the market, then the Pandora "isn't for you". It is very much a niche product pandering to a small margin of people that DO want the features it supplies. Please stop trying to take away our fun with your misplaced arguments. If it isn't something you're interested in, fine, don't buy it. For what I do, a bluetooth keyboard would be too cumbersome, I need the device I can take out of my pocket and just go to town with, and many other users have their own use cases which you completely undermine simply because it isn't something that interests you.
To use an analogy, the after market for spoilers is small but still exists. Whenever I see a tiny Toyota with a spoiler on the back, rare though it may be, I laugh inwardly and wonder why someone would need such a thing, but the person who installed it has their reasons and it isn't my place to judge what they think is cool or not. Sports are another one: some people get really hyped up about what I see as just a game, and I boggle at the memorabilia that people buy, but that's because I recognize that die hard sports fans are not me and I am not them and they have their reasons for liking it beyond it being just a game that I couldn't understand. I could go on and on with examples of things that suit many people just fine that I would never get because I don't need them, things that I am not the target audience of and could never understand the reason for, yet demand exists so the market fills it.
The market exists for a device like the Pandora, even if that market is relatively small and most people don't understand it. I support the device because it does everything that I want to do right now, and I want the people that made it to see it as a viable and possibly growing market so that they will eventually make a new device that will meet any new challenges I might have in the future. Right now, even four years after I learned of the device and 2 years after I received it, it still does everything I need it to do, and has been well worth every penny paid.

Ugly console. S-Video but no HDMI? what the hell? Like someone said earlier, lower the price and double the hardware and you could have a winner here. The idea of a handheld PC/Console is great, but not this product.

Too late and priced too high.

I remember looking into buying a Pandora on for Christmas both in 2009 and 2010. But both times after a little research it became apparent there were massive delays.

As thekanester said the Raspberry Pi is due out soon at for a mere $35 you can get similar brains. Another $200 and you could kit it out in a nice custom case (RepRap'd :-p), screen, keyboard and all the goodies.

Don't get the wrong I love the idea behind Pandora. Its just been a little too slow moving and a little frustrating to watch.

...love the idea....but at this price an with that power...
then apple products don't look that overpriced....

Hmmm...it can play quake 3...could the Pentium II play quake 3? I remember playing the quake 2 demo on a PII with integrated graphics (i assume, i can't remember that system having a graphics card, was too young)...because, iirc, the PII ran about 300 MHz?

So...if a 600 MHz ARM A8 + 110 MHz PowerVR is similar in performance to a 300 MHz PII...lol @ ARM in notebooks

But i guess this is an SoC, and that was a processor only, so maybe it's an apples to oranges comparison...

I'm confused? Why does this device exist if it can't be produced at under $300? A $170 netbook is MUCH faster and MUCH more useful.

They should've just used an existing platform like a netbook, shrunk it to a 7" touch screen, given it HDMI (S-Video? What are they smoking?), and put...wait a minute...

...How does this thing compete with a rooted Kindle Fire and bluetooth keyboard?

The price and form factor was perfect for me...

...3 years ago.

i will be happy to pay for it. it is NOT made in CHINA. i don't know why people don't think about that! how can you be happy playing w/your iphones, andriods, and other cr@p made in China by slave labor!?