While the Cointera (was contera a purposeful misspelling?) has a 3x better GH/$ initial cost, I can't justify that level of spending myself at this time.   As a result, I'd be interested in the $550ish miner.   But that might change if I knew GH/W numbers too.

Oh, and if anyone needs a programmer to help with anything, I can offer my services.  I can also build websites, webstores, etc.  My day job involves writing and supporting the whole component stack involved in FX trading systems.

Yeah, we had a PM going between 5 people earlier about doing this.   One guy already pulled out.  My own take was that it might make sense, especially since I imagine the per-board cost goes down if you ship more of them together, but any delays in getting your board would be bad.   Thus, I suggested waiting until Barntech posted actual shipping costs to decide for sure.  There may be other PMs between the other 3 or 4 that I didn't receive after making that statement. :-)

Name call and curse?  You've got a warped sense of the world Vox.  Barntech has been very forthcoming with info and been exceptionally patient with you, myself, and everyone.  I'd go into business with him any day given the attitude he's displayed so far!

[Edited to remove defense of Barntech et al to Voxelot because, well, Barntech just said it better himself!]

A potentially ugly, but serious, question: Is this a fair assessment for mining for 2 fully assembled Drillbit boards?  http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/a/ae24d25426

I've put in the current PayPal cost, power use assuming 1W per chip, and middle shipping fee based on the range Barntech has been saying.  I left the difficulty, diff increase, pool fee, and BTC exchange rate as the default values.  Set misc cables to $0 on the assumption I can fit the boards inside my pre-existing cases with pre-existing power supplies. 

I'm curious what scenarios others envision?  Are we all just assuming the exchange rate goes up to make any ROI here?  Or are people betting diff increase isn't accurate?   Or are we resigned to be hobbyists?

Okay, so everyone in the UK speak up! :-)

Everything I've seen so far implies these need external power, so using a USB hub doesn't get you the same setup.

But I'm not stressing at all actually.  The selling body parts was a jest.  I'm curious as to the answer.  It would be cool if they had continued plans to manufacture these, especially if they were on compatible boards.  It would make it worth it to get the backplane (mini or not) now by upping my order qty.

What's the thought or plans for the future given you've clearly put a good amount of effort into making the boards stackable with various backplanes?

Is it only 'we did this to enable people to purchase multiple boards on this order', or perhaps 'we plan to offer opportunities to purchase more compatible boards throughout the year that have BitFury chips', or 'we see opportunities to keep providing compatible boards even if we have to switch chip sources', or (ominous music) 'we did this to get someone else to fund our own super-massive scalable mining rig, MWahaha!' :-)

Seriously, I can only put in for one board now (and have done so).  But all the people commenting that they've placed multiple orders made me think: Should I be totally discounting the stackable nature because it will be useless for anything in the future?  And, should I sell body parts to go for a second or more board now because I won't be able to get one later?

I've used Citigold for a little while.  Not yet made a SEPA/EUR xfer, but after a bit of experimentation I do believe that their instant xfers between USD and GBP seem to consistently have lower costs than that HSBC Premier does.  That said, I find the Citigold US and UK websites a little harder to get used to than I did the HSBC one.   However, the qualifications for Citigold are lower and the policies on fee-free xfers outside of themselves seem pretty good, especially compared to HSBC.   Too early for me to really say I like Citi, but I strongly feel that "Premier" is internal-HSBC code for "bend this guy over and ram him against every fee you can imagine."

Unfortunately, my experiences don't involve any xfers to anyone recognized as BTC-related yet, so I can't begin to tell you if either have a problem with that. 

I'll chime in too and up my post count by 1.      I think the restrictions are great in that they help keep the spam counts down on the other areas.  My only fear is what happens if you overcome the restrictions, but then let your activity lag (due to holiday, everything working fine (ha!), or other life issues.)   Do you get demoted and have to overcome the restrictions again?

Link please?  Google has no hits for "xcrowd arsia"

Perhaps this is a problem worthy of reporting to BFGMiner?   Does it generate a crash dump or anything when it dies?

So I've been reading about BTC on and off for over a year now and I'd like to make the jump to actually, you know, owning some.  Even possibly starting to mine with a goal of moving on to using coins as a currency at some point.   But things move so fast around BTC that I'm thinking what I use to 'know' is now outdated, and even reading now there seem to be lots of little players and sites and stuff mentioned that I'm not quite sure whom to trust.  It seems like greed, human nature, and gov't dislike of unregulated currencies have all taken a toll on the services I previously read about and researched to the point most don't exist anymore.  Though I admit that could be due to faulty memory on my part?

Anyway, my question is what is the safest and lowest transaction cost way to acquire a few BTC if I'm starting with either USD or GBP?

Hopefully it isn't to follow all these posts about earning a Satoshi here or there by watching videos, gambling, or some such. :-)   And I've always had a rather large mental hurdle on using a site named after 'Magic The Gathering'.  Though they seem, if anything, to have gotten to be an even bigger 800lb gorilla than they were previously.   I see a number of comments about exchanging locally for cash, but it just seems illicit somehow to meetup at a coffe house or something to hand-over cash.

That said, I'm willing to be educated on the topic so if one of those is the consensus, I'll bite the bullet and give it a try.

Thanks!