I am sad to see Ed take a break, and also that people are losing their temper. It looks to me that people really care about the project and the only real "Wildcard" is the case factory.
It must be so hard for the team, and also one must question the reasons behind the paint job:
- Is it because the factory need more time, and are using the paint job as a way to justify an eventual new delay? i.e The painting took longer than we expected on mass production, so we are now using a new paint machine, but need extra time to run this is, but we are hopeful for a shipping date medio May.
- Is it because the factory are perfectionists and feel duty bound to improve case quality? i.e Open pandora is such an important customer that we will increase our costs, reducing our bottom line, in order to stun them with our quality, ensuring that high volume orders are taken in the future.
It's a very tempting carrot for the team, but scope creep kills projects and I maintain that once a decision is made to ship, a brave leader will stick to their guns and deliver the project "Warts and all" assuming the aims have been achieved.
The reason scope creep is so dangerous is because of unexpected side effects, just off the top of my head they could be:
- Reduction in control of size tolerances. Some cases have a good PCB fit, others need filing down.
- Increased production time, and unknown potential delays related to a new manufacturing process that hadn't been considered.
- Fixing an issue that doesn't exist. The cases are fit for purpose without paint, what does the project gain by painting?
- Potential problems with paint that weren't expected. The paint wears off, the paint is poisonous, the paint reacts with certain other chemicals etc.
So the risks are clear. What are the benefits?
- The units "Might" look better.
- Extra colour choices are available
- Unusual colours can be Ebay'ed to claw back costs
What I find staggering is just how service minded the OP team are. Everything they do it seems they have the customer at heart and as they love consoles as much as we do I fear that this might cloud judgment. I'm in no rush for my Pandora, I only ordered early 2010. That said, I believe that the team needs to have a "Development freeze" on the hardware now, and just get the product out of the door. By all means take a limited number of "Test Painted" cases, and Ebay them, but I don't think it would be so smart to risk the project further with a last minute change.
Thanks again to the OP team for trying to bring to market a unique and interesting console. If you get the units out to us without paint or silkscreen you will have achieved a great result. Sometimes you just have to say "Enough" we ship now. Ed, please don't let the vocal minority force you away from a community that you contribute so much too. Make it a short break! (Like until Monday,) just enough to clear you head, but not so long as to loose touch.
Good luck to the team, and fingers crossed us late adopters will get something before the summer holiday season.
The N900 (very similar type of device: Basically same chipsets, including wi-fi) is in the same range throughput-wise.
