As the dev team works hard. the release date nears as software is produced and perfected. The dev team is an individual team of normal guys, with an exceptional intelligence. They all have experience with things, but nothing with this magnitude. The original plan was to produce 3000, although this was upped to 4000, and you could only get one by preorder. They expect to have 200-300 extra so you MIGHT be able to snag one without a preorder.

Selling 2000 Pandora’s in the first 6 hours, so much traffic on the sites that were selling them they were slowing due to load. Second batch of Pandora’s is expected to be run in 2009, although they have yet to get the first batch shipped. When the Pandora finally gets here we will have a special hands on review, so check back often. This will not happen until the device gets here, but in the mean time feel free to watch the attached video demonstrating Pandora’s custom OS.

The tale of this machine is a long one, first the preorder date got moved back a few times, the preorders finally opened. August 14th, 2008 the “final” design had its pictures posted here. On October 30th the developers decided, due to the bank problems they would make it up to us, and with the decrease in the price of the RAM and NAND, they decided to double both. Now it has 256 MB of RAM and 512 MB of NAND — DOUBLE that of the previous design. for comparison the PSP-1000 had 32 MB main memory, and the PSP-3000 with 64 MB still gets no where near the 256 MB found in the Pandora, that’s four times as much as the PSP-3000, and not only does that beat the PSP with RAM, but it has dedicated 3D hardware.

The people who need their litle gadgets, internet over your phone – even a USB mouse – it is only limited by the Linux driver availability for the device, which is actually very good despite what everyone thinks. An abundance of storage, 64 GB max, because of the dual SDHC card slots. That would be basically two 32 GB SSD’s. Although depending on how strictly it adheres to the SDHC specifications, in time it could support up to 2048 GB on each card. ( source ) 2 TB in a card. Two cards means an abundance of storage, in the future of course. And don’t forget the good thing about open source, you can change it. If the Pandora comes with explicit support for the SDHC standard, someone is bound to change that.

More will be written about this when more news surfaces.

Mean while check out this video (youtube, H.264 and XviD) demonstrating Pandora’s OS

Recently they posted the expected shipping dates and such, these now seem much more reasonable. (Which is unlike the first – which was very hopeful. Although the most recent before this one seemed doable, but then some stuff happened. We’ll see how it goes.) So here is their plan:

• Case Design: January 15th
• Case Prototyping: approx. 1-2 weeks later
• Final production and delivery: approx. 2 – 4 weeks later

That places it late February. You can expect more from us, and hopefully more from the dev team.

I can’t wait to open my box, and write a review. It will be a great upgrade to my gp2x F-200, which broke so i had to take out the touch screen and take out many pieces of the case. Let alone the specs! In case you don’t want to find them for yourself, here they are:

• ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
• 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
• PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
• 800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
• Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
• Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
• Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
• 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
• Around 10+ Hours battery life

I could not go on to mention the people behind this wondrous beast, and not feel bad about it. So major thanks to the following for all your hard work, and dedication to the community around this project.

Dev team, in no specific order:

• Craigix
• EvilDragon
• mfk
• MWeston

GamePark Holdings has stopped selling GP2x units.  Coming to replace it is this unit, Pandora (not made by GPH).  Supposedly going to be released to the public in August for $330 US dollars.  (and in other countries, for varying price.)  Already there are dev units available, but you have to be able to produce something that they would want you to make.  The specs are A LOT better than the GP2x was, even when it was overclocked, also better than the PSP.

The specs are:

• ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
• 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
• PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
• 800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
• Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
• Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
• Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
• 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
• Around 10+ Hours battery life

икони

- Click on thumbnail for full size image -

• Dual CPU Cores: ARM920T Host Processor – ARM940T Video Coprocessor
• 64MB – RAM
• 64MB – NAND Flash Memory
• SD/SDHC (up to 32 Gb) Card Compatible for Storage
• USB 2.0 High Speed Connection
• Linux Operating System for Open Source Development
• 3.5″ TFT LCD Screen @ 320*240 (QVGA), with touch screen panel
• TV-Out for TV Connection using optional cable (both NTSC and PAL compatible)
• Video Playback of MPEG, MPEG4, AVI, DivX, XVid and more
• Music playback of MP3 and OGG
• Supports e-book, games, electronic dictionary
• Compatible with Windows and others
• 3.5 Hours video playback time, 6 hours Audio
• 143.6(wide) x 82.9(long) x 26.6(tall) mm

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition was Run On:
Core 2 Duo E6600 (O.C. to 3.2ghz)
3GB OCZ DDR2 RAM
eVGA 8800GTS 640MB (Driver version Beta 158.45)
Windows Vista

[Source: Brookstone]

Read the full article.

Today AMD announced a new addition to its already famous FX Series. The FX-62 is a monster, the processor operates at the same clock speed of the FX-60 but the exciting news is that the new processor will officially support PC2-5300 and PC2-6400 DDR2 memory. Now that AMD can offer a processor to take full range of the high performing memory Intel will have to start gettin a move on their new Conroe processors

AMD also announced a move to a new platform for their processors; Socket AM2 will soon be phased in as AMD starts to produce both of these new products

****AMD if your reading this please you should send us some processors to test over here at Hypertechtoys.com****

• Dual CPU Cores: ARM920T Host Processor – ARM940T Video Coprocessor
• 64MB – RAM
• 64MB – NAND Flash Memory
• SD Card Compatible for Storage
• USB 2.0 High Speed Connection
• Linux Operating System for Open Source Development
• 3.5′ TFT LCD Screen @ 320*240 (QVGA)
• TV-Out for TV Connection using optional cable (both NTSC and PAL compatible)
• Video Playback of MPEG, MPEG4, AVI, DivX, XVid and more
• Supports e-book, games, electronic dictionary
• Compatible with Windows and others
• MK2 version with new display and new joystick cap

Hopefully someone develops a wifi adapter for this bad boy.

More picks after the jump

The Quake Wars is a trailer composed entirely of gameplay footage, from a third person pov. The game looks very much like Battlefield 2, what makes it different is that it takes place in the not to distant future. This game is going to blow Halo2 and Battlefield 2142 out of the water for sure. id Software never fails to deliver when it comes to their Quake series. No word yet on when this game will be released. Check out the trailer below:

Command & Conquer 3 is currently in development at EALA, it will ship in 2007 for Windows PC. Here is an excerpt from an April 20, 2006 press release:

“Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars combines fast-paced gameplay with new ways to tell a story in an RTS game,” said Mike Verdu, Executive Producer at EA Los Angeles (EALA). “We’re building a next generation Command & Conquer game that is true to the spirit of this classic franchise, but is updated with state-of-the-art visuals, added strategic depth, and gameplay innovations that will move the genre forward. I am very excited to be working on this amazing game.”