Re: Don't buy into pre-orders for Apple II products

[osgeld <kevin@hackaday.com>]

On Sunday, May 5, 2013 7:08:35 PM UTC-5, D Finnigan wrote:
> It looks like the lesson to be learned for all of us here in the Apple II
> 
> community is NOT to preorder anything. This one went wrong, the pre-order
> 
> for my book went wrong. When it's just a one-man project, like all of these
> 
> projects are, there are screw-ups at the start, and the best thing to do is
> 
> to simply wait until final release time.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> ]DF$
> 
> Apple II Book: http://macgui.com/newa2guide/
> 
> Usenet: http://macgui.com/usenet/  <-- get posts by email!
> 
> Apple II Web & Blog hosting: http://a2hq.com/

that is exactly why I have chosen to refuse the surprising amount of preorder requests for my virtual serial host project. I would be in the same boat, I said that crap would be out october 2012, its now may 2013!

the lesson here is for both buyer and seller. Buyers, dont toss your cash to the wind and hope. Sellers, despite how much you know, it will screw up, dont take people's money and get stuck in a jam by unforeseen situations.

If conrad had followed the sellers advice and funded out of pocket with the risk he would not have a mob darn near asking for blood on his ass. Sure if it failed he would be out, but you gotta expect the best you can do is break even in a limited community for a limited machine and measure the involvement vs risk to see if its acceptable.

If it sounds like I speak with hindsight, its really not, this is how it goes in electronics ... great you just spent 1000 dollars on prototypes for your customer to completley change where they put the mounting post's, or your supplier has a 12 week lead time on a part you just ran out of, and their alternate is not qualified for your application... it just never ends.