I wonder if BFL is doing samples because they no longer have the cash to pay for a full production run. If they are making changes to the chips (the only non-cash reason I can think of (without coffee) for still doing sample runs) then they still have to pay for a new mask and full production run. Those are pricey, and BFL may have burned all it's cash. After all, top flight product managers don't come cheap!  |
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They don't update here anymore? Just advertise?
My impression is that they're sorting out the chips that ended up lower speed than predicted and trying to figure out how to ship everyone their units without having to pay out the ass for their number error. Then they'll start selling the new, slightly slower, much more expensive units. The new power draw figures aren't out yet (probably in case they have to change again) but it looks like the 5GH/s jalapeno is going to be 30w per the last thing I saw. For reference the new units support up to 16 chips on one board with higher power draw overall. It looked like the Ars Technial jalapeno was 50W... seems like there is still some inconsistency to the models being shipped currently. Again, I expect the guy can't measure power properly. He's the only one with 50W - so unless there is something wrong with his Jalapeno, it's simply a case of using a crappy Watt meter or not being able to read. While very possible it could also be the difference between measured at the wall and expected/drawn by each chip (although I would doubt a 40% power waste). Some of what they had mentioned about changes to the metal layer on later batches of chips (read also: not the ones shipping now) is that the later chips had improved power profiles. So these might be the early chips that eat more power. He may just have a bad unit or bad measurement, or there might be higher variability and/or power draw in the first units. TL;DR - I would at least expect later units to draw less J/GH/s I got one of the Jalapenos in the 2nd small batch sent out after the first 2 Jalapenos - so well before him. Mine reads 32W at the wall (5.4Gh/s) How hard is it to misread a kill-a-watt? Perhaps it is a multi-chip unit with the chips under-clocked. |
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He had as much of a clue as he needed...which was not really a whole lot. Don't be thick.
Dont be thick? You telling that to a Smoothie? lol oh the irony  You thought and apparently still think that BFL was a real company trying to make real gear for real people. You were chumped like there rest. The joke here is that berating Josh for not being a good product manager...and I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the joke is on you. I have been pretty critical of BFL, but I believe they will eventually deliver something before getting crushed by the competition. It will not meet their specs (or even get close), be weeks before anyone sees it in bulk, and will probably die after running for a few months, but it will be something. A decent percentage of their pre-orders might even be filled. |
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Sorry I willfully ignore all things that do not conform with my predetermined world view.
You don't need to belabor that point. |
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According to the latest official BFL update more chips will be packaged in the week beginning 20 May, which means BFL should get them during the last week of May and probably start working through June 2012 orders late this month or in June. The few hundred chips they have this week will only last for a handful of units. The timeline seems to be timed to perfection (the chips work as expected with new revision boards, etc). As we've seen in the past this is often not the case.
Could you provide a citation for the latest BFL report? I'd like to read what they have to say. Thanks  |
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Why quote what was posted in February by Josh and then try to pass it off as more recent?  If you can find more recent sticky posts that contain news, please post them. |
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If Avalon was in a cash crunch, I would not begrudge them the ability to fund their work via mining. As long as they are upfront with customers about it.
Specifically:
If Avalon decides to fund development through mining, customers should know this before they choose to buy.
Avalon would need to explain how the deployment of mining hardware affects their customer orders (in both positive and negative ways).
This would also hold for BFL. Let us say BFL ships 300 units and then announce that they are in a cash crunch and can't afford to build and ship the rest. If they proposed to use some of their chips to mine in order to fund the parts purchase for the rest of the orders, that would be acceptable to me personally. It would also be better for some customers (but not all) who otherwise would not receive anything back for their investment. The key is to declare what their conflict of interest is and let the customers decide if they are comfortable with it.
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Why do you think that? I have heard there are on the order of 10,000 units on order from BFL. And they have a massive wafer order in process.
and that's the best way to make money : take tens of thousands of orders, far undercut competitors in price, and absolutely FLOOD the market so nobody can remake their cost in investment within 5 years
BFL just ran into that snag that they can't make a working product! whoops.
It's true! BFL is the best friend to those who can actually mine in any way, shape, or form.If all that 'customer' money BFL has tied up were in productive use actually mining anything it would be a different set of dynamics for those who are happily hashing away and making money right now (or over the last 8 months for that matter.) Keep up the good work BFL. I didn't expect to be mining any time soon, but I got a wild hair and got one of those tiny 'Block Eruptor' USB miners-on-a-stick from a real company who might actually be able to deliver some day before the earth stops cooling. I'm just glad that so many BFL 'customers' are now waiting patiently so that my pissy little 300 Mh/sec may actually do something fun. ^This BFL has been a miners best friend. |
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50 watts, 80C.
Minteresting. I wonder how many chips are under that heat sink.
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Batch 1 was 300 units. They delivered less than 300.
(reading the first line i had to correct you before reading the rest...)
Ok, about the rest... what should i say? BFL deserves a 2 (they have a product), Avalon a 3 (where is my order that should have shipped 2 months ago and why you had to create a separate smt line/why is the difficulty skyrocketing/why the continuos delay and bullshit[you started shipping back in april, you shipped 20 units, etc...], ASICMINER deserves a good rating, they have a good PR, and they ship in time. They are extremely overpriced, but it's always better than to pay and not to receive.
I removed the total score as it is misleading the topic, if we just could look at the overall performance ( without priority of if or how much they have delivered till now) of this companies and their legal structures, that would be great. By that criteria, Bernie Madoff wins. He had a rock solid legal structure and promised people massive returns for 2 decades. This is why reviewers like Tom's Hardware actually wait until they have the hardware before they review it. Until BFL can actually deliver, they should be dropped from this examination. |
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BFL customer support should be 0, since 99.99% of their customers still have not received what they ordered.
Price performance of products should be 0, since 99.99% of their customers are currently getting 0GH/s.
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Just by making this thread, the OP lowers BFL PR rating to 1.
Way too transparent.
Please fix the scores.
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CSR stands for Customer Service Representative. Large companies have them. That is who is called when customers show up unexpectedly.
Smaller companies either have sales or marketing, or if really small upper management would handle it.
When a customer shows up with out an appointment it is either a cause for celebration or trouble.
You don't call the cops (unless you have something to hide).
You find out why the person came all that way (writing an article, research for lawsuit, going postal, etc).
You are confusing BFL with a retail business, they are a hardware design firm that just happens to sell to end users. Dealing with people who just show up as a small business is one of the most annoying/time consuming things to deal with on the customer side when you are not in physical retail, independent if you tell them to fuck off or try to meet their requests. Look at it this way, if you refuse every customer who doesn't make an appointment what will happen?. They will make one if it is important enough. If you rather try to service every damn person who shows up unannounced at your door, you are gonna end up in a situation where the general census becomes that you get better customer service if you walk up to their door and annoy them. Unless you are brick and mortar there is no benefit of wasting customer service resources on this for "normal customers" when they can't even show the courtesy of making a appointment. It just creates expectations you can't control when you let your customers decide the terms rather than setting them yourself. Sure if Joe with trousers of gold who is 10% of your total business knocks on the door it's a different matter. But I guess in the US the customer is always right and if you are not satisfied you can always sue for just about anything. You and I think about customers differently. You seem to see them as a plague that must be avoided. I see them as a valuable resource to be mined for information about how to improve our products. The Procter and Gamble headquarters have actual tours you can take, so does the Corning headquarters. I highly recommend both. I wouldn't expect BFL to offer tours for a number of reasons. But BFL spoke to this guy at length. The behavior I expected would be to have the visitor make an appointment with sales or customer service and return at a later date. Instead, they rushed someone out to do...what exactly? That is what I find a bit odd. But everything to date with BFL has been a bit odd. |
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With my order not the price but the shipping status was updated yesterday.
it's now "fulfilled", afaik that means its shipped. I can't believe.
Can anyone confirm another 2012 jala order to be fulfilled the last 3 days?
Surely, some mistake? Keep us updated if you get any tracking info. it looks like it was a scam on the german forums  Doesn't surprise me, people are trying to smear BFL to make them look worse than they are, (don't get me wrong, BFL have terrible customer relations so far) but there seems to be strongs campaigns against BFL especially on these forums, that kind of reminds me of the propaganda stunts the rebels are using against the government in Syria atm: "Rebels accuse BFL of using chemical weapons"So that would make BFL the Assad regime? Terrible analogy. Some people here have sat through 10 months of BFL smoke and mirrors. Others, who have only ever read the Butterflylabs website & forums, just arrived yesterday. |
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I'm surprised they didn't just outright tell you to leave immediately, it's what I would have done to someone showing up unannounced.
maybe you don't know anything about customer satisfaction, communication and public relations. If you are selling this kind of product over web, still postponing deliveries and hold thousands of $ almost year and somebody visits you, you must be able to answer any questions and make your best to satisfy the visitor. Especially, when you will know, that visitor will share the info with other hungry customers through forums, boards and other communication channels on web. what you say maybe works within some local business but definitely not on web base selling with six months delay.. If I just walked into one of the main offices for the big e-retailers in sweden they would most likely call the cops if I didn't leave immediately. If you have thousands of customers and a few % of them just decides to drop in to check on things on a weekly basis it becomes really messy fast. A few people every now and then probably isn't a problem for anyone but when it becomes common practice it's a different beast entirely. CSR stands for Customer Service Representative. Large companies have them. That is who is called when customers show up unexpectedly. Smaller companies either have sales or marketing, or if really small upper management would handle it. When a customer shows up with out an appointment it is either a cause for celebration or trouble. You don't call the cops (unless you have something to hide). You find out why the person came all that way (writing an article, research for lawsuit, going postal, etc). |
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My status just changed to "complete" does that mean they shipped it? O.o
Let's hope so. |
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And to add to that Joshy-boy can't even pay up his 1000 BTC bet with Runeks or at least prove he paid it.
And the 1000 charity donation BFL needs to make...
He claimed he paid both. Of course, he didn't say which transaction it was in... |
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Pho Queen is indeed delicious. Two streets over is one named ReamWood. A perfect place to host a Bitcoin ASIC pre-order shop. |
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The only real mistake BFL has done was communicating at all with the community. They should just have said "not yet, when it's done it's done" and stuck to that until they had something to show. People these days seems to take anything you say in public as a promise, and go on a fucking crusade when you don't stick to whatever you previously said exactly. Newsflash, during product development shit changes all the damn time, sometimes stuff you spent weeks on is scrapped and plans changed. It's just generally better to say fuck all and let people speculate else they start whining and bitching.
Unfortunately, they funded their development with pre-orders. They also left in place the ability to get a refund for a pre-order. If they let rumors run wild, everyone could ask for a refund and derail the whole development train. So they have to continue to market their product, if only to reassure their investors. BFL going quiet was never really an option. |
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Almost certainly a manufacturing defect. I would imagine just showing them the card will get you through the RMA process and on your way to a new card.
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