My good sir, you forget the obvious. That no one bought their lower end rig to earn a mere 20 cents a day. (Unless they are totally  hardcore in support of the BitCoin network)

The lower end your hardware is, the sooner it will become marginal profit. There is no debate on this IF the following conditions are true:

A) The ASICs collectively ship after Block Halving from all vendors.
B) The volume of High Gh/s products reaches the BitCoin network in progressively larger number and raise the difficulty sharply over the next year.
C) The ROI period of time is significantly stretched out by B and A.

People, we are only talking about ROI. This means you make back the money you actually spent @ your vendor....we aren't even talking about positive profit. By the math above 700 days to recoup that money is insane. 20 cents a day is insane.

There is a good reason why I mentioned a specific vendor basically admitting they were selling lemons to their customers. If they were touting energy efficiency and marginal returns as a selling point then that means they were fully aware of what their customers would eventually realize on the lower end of their product offering.
---------------------------

At the start, while difficulty is low, people will likely be quite happy with their low end purchases, but as difficulty guts their returns, they will definitively be crying to high heaven that it may take up to 2 years to make back the cost of a Jally as the margins rapidly shrink. (assuming electricity costs remain the same, which it may not considering world issues.)

That people don't realize this either means they haven't thought that far ahead (I have at least!) or they are "friggin moronic" to use your words.

You think you know what a troll is? Wait until the majority realize the lemons they have bought. You get what you pay for.

This isn't coming from a crystal ball. It's common sense if you evaluate a number of different factors. Are you even looking at the returns on some of these products? If you are perfectly satisfied with marginal returns then there is nothing wrong with this at all. You just have several hundred days until you ROI is complete.

The money (or BTC) will come "fast" at first with a low end device, then gradually slow down to a mere trickle. This is likely before you recoup 100% of your investment. So its like throwing money into a furnace with a low end device.

The good news is, if people give up in that span of time and shut off their rigs, or if you resell your rig in a second market to recoup your costs in a reasonable time frame. (reasonable for me is far less than a year)

Since when did I become a public service?

Pay me a salary, then I will do the PR job on your behalf!

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As for your other question, when I ask you a question and you kindly answer it, then yours will definitely receives an answer in kind. It is a "give and take" type of forum.

Then I guess the BFL representative doesn't know his match as much as I do.

Same story with ASICs. (Get some perspective folks!)

"High electricity costs" is always relative to the situation of increasing complexity/difficulty a device has to handle. An ASIC power requirement is as fixed as a GPU. It is simply more efficient (for now) when contrasted against the current (11-21-2012) difficulty level.

GPU's were a goldmine until the difficulty went up. With ASICs the difficulty will simply go up a bit more sharply. The first to become unprofitable will be Jally's then Little Singles and finally Singles. Mini-rigs will outlast the others by a long shot.

Edit: By the way, you can't blame the  GPU's demise on devices which don't currently exist and aren't adding to increasing difficulty yet. (ASICs)

GPU's are halfway out of the mining game because the difficulty continues to rise and the profits just keep decreasing. You could probably make the case the FPGA's are making the situation worse, but I don't think there are that many FPGA's out there.

Why then aren't people keeping their GPU or FPGA rigs active if your ideas and Badonkadonk are correct? (that somehow a Jally or Little Single will be profitable even if there is a late delivery and ever increasing difficulty)

If you can't answer the above, then it's not trolling. It's just obvious.

P.S. The people who will be making tons of BTC are the mini-rig crowd (or people buying multiple units to approach a mini-rig like system.)

@
Badonkadonk

You heard one of BFL representatives stating repeatedly in the last month that they had done the math and the profitability is stretched out over many days. They were referring to a Single SC and a ROI over a significant period of time. (Hence, the pitch that It was a selling point on their "energy efficiency".)

If you cut the performance in half for a Little Single do you expect it to get better? What about even further than that for a Jally?

As difficulty rises, the performance has to rise otherwise a Jally or Little Single produces significantly less as the time frame increases.

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Sure it is speculation. But I don't estimate difficulty to go down as time increases. Should I expect it [difficulty] will somehow decrease as time increases? (Let me know)

Perhaps Armageddon or another Super Sized  Sandy will hit various regions of the world and people won't be mining to bring up the difficulty. Perhaps a crazy thing like that might keep the difficulty down.

There is speculation that the picture is only a non-working dud as of yet. Hopefully they will have working prototypes soon.

One representative stated that they won't have any samples in the incoming batch. So if it is broke, then the fat lady has sung. They said that was unlikely though. I believe them on that. Question is, how many times did they try and when did each iteration occur in their timeline/schedule?

That info alone would change the actual reasons for the past delays. [or at least solidify that there was never a possibility for shipping earlier until just now.]

[Speculation and comments based on opinion]
With the stated schedule closing in, I think the first wave of refunds is about to start.

People are starting to turn into "concerned customers" on the company forum. (err I mean "trolls" in company speak)

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The smaller purchasers haven't seemingly figured out that the Jally and Little Singles are pretty unprofitable the longer they wait to receive them. (after block halving that is). It seems like an inescapable reality that customers will eventually do the math and figure it out.

What BFL will do about it to turn lemons into lemonade is gonna be pretty interesting.

I think the PCB's costs more than the ASIC chips themselves. Probably why they encouraged people turning their Jally's into Little Singles.

http://www.onestopsystems.com/direct_attached_products.php

Maybe with some PCIe USB cards?

Perhaps for the purposes of confirming the outer housing is actually within manufacturing  tolerances?

Either way, now it is bASIC turn to upstage or lay like a dead goose in the background.

Oh, by the way, the prototype picture has been released.



Courtesy of: www.butterflylabs.com

Re-posted under the FAIR USE ACT for discussion purposes.

It is unknown (as of yet) if this is simply a prototype for the case design or if it is a fully working prototype.

If it is the latter, then obviously the burning questions is: Did it meet the power and efficiency ratio of 1Gh per watt? I'll let others ask....

Or [Speculation]

That the COO (Chief Operations Officer) does not honestly   know if there will be a delay of several weeks (months) until just 3 days before announcing it publicly... and of course, after having a meeting with the rest of the staff.

It's like a NASA meeting, they check with each department head first at a meeting to make sure they will be late before they then announce it. The shipping department looks at the COO and CEO and...stands up, pulls their pockets inside out, then in a grim monotone voice says the "no-go" signal and then the COO and CEO just suddenly realize they have to scrub the mission and postpone it for a few months.





I am joking though...

One BFL representative has further stated that the pre-orders should finish shipping by the end of January [clause: if there are no "snags"]. But no start date is given. (It is assumed it will be the planned "5th week of November")

Further, an update from Jody stated that they are still "waiting" on parts.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/entry.php/48-Batches-Really-We-Don-t-Have-Them

That is no longer true.

Jody has just mentioned the staff will stop working for two days surrounding T-Day.

Check out the Blogs.....

Oh, and the 1/3 plan is history in her latest blog post. Now it doesn't matter when you placed your order....but when you paid it.

It sounds like you have a number of undisclosed features, correct?

Can you start a thread where we can make feature requests for the second/third generation Avalon device? (or would you prefer private feature requests by email?)

@ Bogart

I am not totally sure, but their first mention of the bullet run may have been are far back as October 20ish. Then a [very] vague statement of "refraction" issues with their run. As well as a mention of some kind of error being acceptable and was factored into their release timeline.

What is a [reasonable] timeframe for a render and an actual picture of the Avalon Device?

Then we are both in the same boat with respect to our purchases....

I am hoping someone will come up with a viable "Plan B" regardless of which vendor we purchased from. The first vendor to cater to the "Plan B" crowd will double their size overnight....

<Hint><Hint>

By the way, the Avalon team won me over by virtue of the self contained unit. I wonder when they will next revise their power numbers downward.

Actually, I wonder when BFL will confirm their actual power numbers.

@ DoomDumas

What is "Plan B", if any?

At what point do you start thinking of heading for the exit? I assume you have at least several thousand invested so I want to hear your thoughts on what you feel can go wrong and what would shake you enough to pull out (if anything).

What are the warning signs to look out for in your investment?

Edit: The reason I ask is because so far I have heard people say plenty about refunds...but so far I haven't heard of an actual  backup strategy. (except diversification)

Does this mean it is encased in plastic or will the chip be covered with a metal heat spreader?

What are the viable ambient operating temperatures for the Avalon ASIC? (32F > 105F?)

Actually, that was their old target date. It has since been moved up to January 14th, 2013 with a reasonable possibility [unconfirmed] to as early as December. They just recently posted the tech they are using to build their products.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120184.msg1338015#msg1338015

BFL is infamous for lengthening their target dates.

bASIC is known for keeping their target dates.

Avalon is known for shortening thier target dates.