Hello everyone, Craig here,

I've been a little quite on the forums again, but worry not, it's entirely because I'm working all my conscious hours building Pandoras and iControlpads.

And I'm enjoying it. Your generosity with the order upgrades, iControlpad orders and $500 units has been, as always, fantastic.

The extra money has not only saved this project from forever limping along in to obscurity, it has breathed new life in to all of the core team.

Today I finally gave myself a few hours to really use my Pandora for the first time in *months*. With Hotfix5 I really feel we have moved in to a very user friendly and stable zone. I just want to thank those of you who worked on all the OS software in the last couple of years, I can't really put in to words what an amazing job you have done.

I'm now preparing to send out several units for reviews. They are not going to any mainstream magazines or websites. However they are going to the right places.

Solid support shall continue until we make the Pandora the absolute best mini computer in the world.

Those of you who are about to receive their units in the next 1.5 months (and there are a lot of you!) are in for a treat, you will be stepping in to a world of quality mature software - you all know we're sorry for how long it has taken to ship your units, but we had to get them right. Had we shipped all 4000 back in 2010 we would have gone bust due to returns.

Last week we refitted the assembly rooms with heat exchangers, air cleaners, new tools, new testing equipment, new storage, new shelving, new insulation, the whole lot. It is essentially now a professional set up, which we will continue to improve.

We are aiming to stay in this industry, and thanks to your understanding and support we are almost clear of the bumpy road.

The future is looking very exciting indeed!

Thanks,

Craig

http://boards.openpandora.org/index....985#entry37985

Well, these sure are busy times... so many things happening at the same time.

First, some of the good news: CC still is in good contact with Michael now, so the new guy certainly seems to know what he's doing and tries to satisfy us.
We'll have to see if they'll keep their schedule, but if they do, then it's 1100 more units within the next 30 days, which is nice.
According to the schedule, a shipment should happen today.

They are trying to improve their quality control, as with each batch, there were some other faults with some units, and it eats quite some time in assembly if you test everything again.
For example, a few boards from the last shipment had a non-working SD2 slot. Such boards should never have left CC, and that's what they want to improve. They want to try to only deliver fully working boards.
Seems like we weren't the only ones here who overexpected the MASSIVE amount of work that is needed to build such a unit.

As the end of Batch 1 is getting nearer (yeah, I know there are still many waiting, I know waiting gets harder the more units are shipped...), we are also heavily organizing Batch 2.
Production for the NEW, more sturdy LCD cables has started today, this will be the end of all purple haze issues (though it has become quite rare, we want to eliminate it completely).
Those cables will be used for the last 650 - 800 units of Batch 1 as well, and of course for future replacements.

The remaining cases for batch one, including about 800 cases for batch 2 already, have arrived in UK and are waiting to be assembled.

The batteries for Batch 2 have been produced as well and are ready to be shipped to UK... 4000 batteries, that's some weight.

Production of the PCBs will also take place this month.

As CC already mentioned they have quite a few boards that don't work, it might be that some of the Batch 1 preorderers might get boards from Batch 2, so it's important Batch 2 can start right after Batch 1 is over.

Softwarewise, you might have seen that Hotfix 5 for the current Zaxxon OS has been released. This includes a lot of new features and fixes, so I suggest to everyone to install it.
Heavy work has started on the next OS (Yars Revenge), featuring the most recent Angström as well as a new kernel. It will be quite a while until a final version will be out, but first alpha test versions might be out soon. This will heave the OS to a whole new level.

In parallel, work for Hotfix 6 has started.
There's been a lot of organization going on for the OS development as well, so that everyone can help out here.
I'll post more info about that when I find some time.

Speaking of time:
Yes, I KNOW it would be nice, updating the status page more regularly, or keeping you informed about everything that has happened.
However, we are all only humans. Last week, I've been working about 18 hours a day - 6 hours normal job and 12 hours for Pandora. I resurrected some boards that were DoA, built some units, fixed some with broken LCD Cables, etc. It's A MASSIVE amount of work. And believe me, after having worked for 18 hours, you're simply not in the mood to still post updates... you just feel worn out.
I've also got a 2 week big eMail pile lying ahead of me I still need to reply.

We don't do that intentionally. We try to work everything out as good as possible to get the units as fast and reliable as possible to you. But we're just humans, we have our limitations as well.
I hope you do understand that. Thanks.

http://boards.openpandora.org/index....ez-2011-03-04/