Pandora Status Update ...

Pandora Status Update, Manufacturing and credit cards

November 4th, 2008, 21:57 Posted By: wraggster

Chip posted this news:

I've had a nice chat with Craig today about the Pandora project status. He's gone off to bed (it's 2AM there, I think), but I'm going to try to give you a condensed state of affairs.

Credit Card Orders
As you know, some (not all) credit card orders will have to be refunded and the orders re-placed with the new bank. This process will begin tomorrow (or today, if it is already Nov. 4 when you red this). The orders are being refunded geographically - UK, then continental Europe, then North America. The whole process should take about a week. If your card is being refunded, you will receive an email with instructions for re-ordering. No, I don't know what those instructions are. The emails will go out when the refunds are processed, but because different banks process things differently, you may not see the money in your account immediately. Personally, if I'm affected, I won't be re-ordering until the money shows up in my account. I suggest you do the same, but it's your call.

I don't know if there is any sort of time limit on re-ordering. I don't know about "places in line". I'll find out.

If you don't get an email in the next week, then your credit card order was processed successfully before the bank went wonky. Your order is secure and you don't need to do anything.

Manufacturing Update
Apparently the last piece of the puzzle, the last item that needs to be finalized before we'll have a complete Pandora, is the wifi antenna. Good antenna design is the main distinguishing factor between good wifi reception and crappy reception. Having an antenna professionally designed would have cost something like $100K, so the design team had to go a different route. The testing has taken longer than expected, but the result will be excellent wifi range.

The good news is that the antenna probably won't have much of an effect on production times. The bad news is that the LCD panels probably will.

Delays
There are definite supply problems with the LCD panels. It is a simple matter of the manufacturer committing to a certain number in a certain time, and not being able to deliver on that time schedule. It is unfortunate, but it is not uncommon either. There is nothing that can be done about it.

They are shipping panels as they become available, and they will fill out the entire order. However, they will probably not fill the entire order by the end of this month. They may not have it filled by the end of next month. Yes, that means some people might not get their Pandoras until next year. It sucks, but like I said, there is nothing that can be done.

Refunds
As has been the policy from the beginning, you may have your pre-order refunded at any time. This is a community project, and I get the impression that some of you who are new to the community didn't understand what that meant when you placed your order. If you don't want to deal with problems like this, there are others who don't mind as much.

OK, not the best news, but we are moving forward. I'm going to do my best to keep everybody up to date with this stuff. I PMed ED to see about getting front page posting access on Openpandora.org so I can put big updates there. Until then, I'll just sticky anything really important for a couple days and then let if fall. And of course, I will add any significant dev update to my list.

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