I'm afraid that's true.  Maybe not in the beginning, but definitely right now.  They're selling people investments that will never pay off.  It's no better than selling someone stock in a company that you know is going bankrupt.

Really?  One company--Cointerra--claims that they're going to deliver 2,000 terahashes of hashing capacity in December alone.

Or think about it this way.  If the difficulty increases 25% for each of the next three intervals--which of course it will, it's not like the ASIC vendors are closing up shop--then the difficulty will double.  And an interval is like 10 days now, so we're talking a month.

YYY--I have it right here.  It arrived about a week and a half ago.  I can send you a photo.  Want it?

CryptoCrazy--it looks profitable because some of your inputs are inaccurate.

First, you put in the current difficulty as 390 million.  That is the current difficulty, but only for another couple of days.  By the time someone actually receives the Saturn, the difficulty will be something like 520 million.  Put that number into your calculator, and you're immediately in the red.

Also, you underestimated the difficulty increase per month.  You input 119% when the actual value is at least 150%.

Difficulty on August 24: 65,750,060
Difficulty on September 25: 148,819,200
% increase August to September:  126%

Difficulty on October 26: 390,928,788
% increase September to October:  163%

But if you think I'm wrong, why don't you buy this Saturn?  It should be free money for you.

KnCMiner is selling their 275 GH/s Saturn model for $2,995.

There's no way that anyone buying that miner today is going to make any money from it.

* You will have to have to wait for the miner to be delivered.
* KnCMiner and other vendors will continue to sell as many miners as they can manufacture.
* Vendors are already talking about the next generation of ASIC miners, which will eclipse the existing generation just as soon as they show up.

But hey, don't take my word for it.  Plug the data in here:  http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

The subjective parameter you need to adjust is "profitability decline per year," which defaults to 0.63, an utterly ludicrous value.  It's ludicrous because it's based on Moore's Law.  It doesn't account for the fact that the difficulty depends not only on the efficiency of each miner but also on how many miners are out there.  Even if nobody ever develops a faster miner from this point on, the difficulty will still continue to increase just because the vendors are selling more of the same miners.

What is the correct decline value?  Here's a tool to calculate that:  http://srkz.net/msc/difficultyprofitslider.html

For example, if the difficulty increases 25% per interval, then the decline value is 0.00008425.  Even that's an overestimate because the calculator assumes there are 26.08928571 intervals per year (one interval every 14 days), when in fact the duration of each interval has been shorter because the hash rate of the network has been increasing so dramatically.

The upshot of all this is that the Saturn will make a little money for you if the difficulty increase per period somehow stays below 15-20%.  But that's not going to happen, at least not in the next 3-6 months.  You're better off spending your $2,995 on BTC, which at today's rates will get you about 14 BTC.  Your Saturn will never generate that many coins.

I'm sure this post will generate some idiotic replies along the lines of "if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen," as if only weak people are affected by mathematics.  If you disagree with me, put your money where your mouth is.  I say that the Saturn will never generate 14 BTC.  If you think I'm wrong, then buy my Saturn for 14 BTC.  You can contact me directly at wboyce@panix.com.  If you're in the United States, I'll pay shipping and include the CoolerMaster V850 power supply that I bought for it.