Convince me NOT to cancel my order.

[Ian Stirling]

Don Park wrote:
> On 8/31/07, Sean Moss-Pultz <sean at openmoko.com> wrote:
> 
>>>admin at mmri.us...
>>>My point is starting this topic was to bring attention to the fact that
>>>probably 500 to 1000 potential developers were likely to get saddled with
>>>GTA01 phones right before the GTA02s were released and that FIC staff were
>>>not providing sufficient information about likely delivery dates.  We are
>>
>>I really wish we could give more accurate timing information. But please
>>understand that what you're seeing is a product being built from
>>scratch. We're not using reference designs. We're not using 3rd party

> but surely there is information about what
> is expected to happen? How about saying what the production plans are?
> Ive read on this list both October 07 and January 08 as estimated
> GTA02 completion dates. The readership is left to make their best
> guess based on essentially rumors. Is it a separate electrical
> engineering team that is designing the GTA01/02 inside FIC and that is
> partly why the software devs are in the dark?
> 
> The GTA01 is in production and its the same story. There has been
> mention of 'another batch' on Sep 20th, but again no announcements.
> How about  stating 'X GTA01s are available for sale. Y GTA01s are in
> production with an estimated completion date of Z' and 'On date D1 we
> expect to stop making new GTA01s and start making GTA02s'. That would
> be something to chew on, knowing full well that estimates change and
> surprises happen.

Indeed.
Knock off 5 days for shipping to end users, 5 days for FIC doing 
shipping stuff, 5 days for transit from HK to US, 5 days for production 
and we're getting pretty close to the 'volume production of GTA02 has to 
start today to get to paying devs in october' date already.

Is there sufficient confidence in the current GTA02 rev to actually 
start volume production in the next week or so?

If not, can you please tell us.

Is it planned to distribute GTA02 to a select group of external testers 
first?

Personally, I suspect that I've lost several potential dev-months of 
time for OM, simply as I have not been able to say to people who are 
very interested in this sort of stuff, and who I have seen coding on 
random 'cool' gadgets, that if they put down money now, they will get 
hardware in a week or so.
(and in all of those cases, they've only really been interested in 
coding for a platform after actually getting their hands on the physical 
object.)