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Banking issues
As you may have noticed, the refund and reorder plan has not gone as smoothly as originally anticipated. The short version, which I have been given permission to relate to you now, is thus: Our bank, for reasons of its own, decided not to honor the bulk of credit card orders placed for Pandoras. They insisted that we refund them. As we have been filing refunds, they have (again, for reasons of their own) been incredibly reluctant to process them.
We are doing everything in our power to get this resolved as quickly as possible. All UK and European orders have now been processed and refunds for North America and the rest of the world are continuing. Everybody who placed an order is still secure in their place in line, and your money is still secure in our bank until such time as it is returned to your bank. You are at no risk of anything except waiting. The project as a whole is at no financial risk.
The good news is that none of this affects production. These banking problems are causing no end of headaches for Craig and his office staff, but they have not put Openpandora in any financial trouble. All parts have been ordered and the factory is getting everything together.
Manufacturing
MWeston has just posted a very informative update pertaining to the manufacturing process. As you can see, we are gearing up for production despite the ordering kerfuffle.
At this time, we have 20 very nearly finished Pandoras on hand. By "very nearly", I mean we still only have FDM cases, and they are still waiting for the final keypad / control membrane. Once the membranes are sorted out, we will have plenty of pictures (and probably video) of these units for you. These are obviously still test units. Some have the old 128MB RAM part, some have the new 256MB part. All will be tested extensively and then passed on to software devs. Everything in these units is 100% finalized (except the cases, and the units with 128MB RAM, obviously). There will not be any more board revisions, aside from maybe a new battery connection.
We still only have approximately 400 LCD panels on hand right now (more on the way), but as MWeston said, we're doing small batches to start out. The batch sizes will probably be something like 400, 800, 1000, 1000+. We would like to hold on to this first finished batch of 400 for a bit for extensive testing. Once the manufacturing process has been perfected and we have all the LCD panels, the factory can spit out the rest of the order in less than a month.
Other News
As many of you already know, I have officially been brought into the Pandora project as sort of public relations liaison. I am not "employed" by Openpandora, I am only helping out on a voluntary basis. This means that I have better access to more accurate (direct from the horse's mouth, so to speak) information. I will be relaying these updates the same way I always have - via stickies in this forum. I may occasionally post news or blog updates to openpandora.org as well, but that is more an outlet for the actual developers. They post milestones there. Here is where I post the minor day-to-day and week-to-week stuff for which everybody has been clamoring.
In addition to better access to information, my position with Openpandora might lead to some other perks, like videos, interviews, photos and more. There is also a chance I might get one of the very early Pandoras for demonstration purposes. Not one of the 20 we have now (those will be more useful in the hands of software devs), but one of the first final units to come off the assembly line. Possibly before testing and before anything else ships. This means I might be able to post extensive photo and video documentation of the device, weeks before they start shipping. Nothing is carved in stone, just something we're batting around.
That is pretty much the state of everything right now. As things change, I'll keep you updated.
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