Opinions on a display

[JimBo]

Maybe Medialas will end up dropping the price of MB and the USB to keep up with competition.

Jimbo

[jkaiser3000]

In either case, it's a win-win situation

[jeejeedr]

I'm probably crossing a line here that I shouldn't, but when Bill Brenner was talking about this new product at FLEM this past weekend, he hinted that the price point for this new hobbyist board (which is based on the flashback product, BTW) would be closer to $500. That puts it squarely between the Alphalite and Mamba...

I told Bill at the time that if he can hit that price point, he'll be the new king of the hobbyist market. (Right now I think the Mamba/Easylase combination is probably the most popular solution for hobbyists in terms of price vs features and overall value.)

But if this Pangolin unit comes out for just $500, there's *no* reason to go with anything else - especially when you consider the fact that the Easylase DAC has some pronouced sample jitter (which I'm certain that the Pangolin unit will not have).

Bill was talking about a Spring, 2007 release for this baby...

Adam

The only disadvantage with the pangolin stuff is that it isn't an open hardware solution. For me, playing with lasers is also about designing my own usb output gear. With Mamba this is fairly easy. The software driver takes a day to make. I saw Benner say somewhere that the software will be tied to pangolin hardware, thus limiting my 'playing' abilities. It is a bit like microsoft. Trying to keep the competition out by imposing the use of all components of the same manufacturer. I have no doubt however that the quality will be great.

[buffo]

I think there's more to it than that...

At the Florida get-together we just had, someone asked Bill why Pangolin doesn't support other hardware. He explained that at one time Pangolin actually considered making both their hardware and software compatible with some of the other packages (including Mamba) that were available. They polled their dealer network, and the response from the dealers was overwhelming: Stay with the custom hardware and closed software.

The reasons make sense, if you look at it from a dealer standpoint. Suppose I decided to purchase the Pangolin software and then wanted to run it on someone else's DAC. (Say, the easylase USB DAC.) Now, when I'm tuning my scanners, I notice that there are some lines in the test pattern that are supposed to overlap perfectly, but I can't get them to overlap because my DAC timing is a little off. (Sample jitter) Whom do I blame? (Especially if I'm not experienced enough to recognize that the problem is sample jitter and not a software issue.) Even if I *do* know that it is a problem with the DAC, is the Pangolin dealer still supposed to assist me in troubleshooting a 3rd party DAC?

The same thing applies if you sell the QM 2000 board and allow other software to talk to it. If that other software has a flaw that corrupts the output of the board, who's fault is it that the displayed image looks like crap? (And how do you prove it's the software and not the hardware?) For a dealer, this is a potential nightmare. This is why they all said they wanted Pangolin to only be sold as a hardware and software set.

I agree that, for the hardware or software tinkerer, it would be great to have an open system to play with. But remember that Pangolin has built a solid reputation of customer support, and that would be difficult to maintain when you start letting people fool around with your system. They would have to deal with all sorts of questions about hardware and software that they didn't develop themselves and would only have limited knowledge about. The alternative - forgo customer support for these tinkerers - is not a direction they'd like to go either, since that undermines their present position as a leader in customer support.

Adam