Ok, I stand corrected, thank you for giving out the source.
But then, the date of this archive.org snapshot,
August 19, 2011, elucidates everything... At that time BFL had not introduced themselves to the community, they had of course not even started taking orders, and the community was at large completely unaware of BFL. There is only a single bitcointalk.org post referencing BFL, that pre-dates August 19. It was made 4 days earlier on August 15 in the russian subforum by some guy who apparently stumbled upon the site:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=35259.msg456853#msg456853 His post was probably the first link to butterflylabs.com ever, and is probably what allowed the archive.org crawler to discover and archive the page.
Obviously this was a beta version of their website that they were not ready to advertise around. I see no malice in having a non-final "concept" case for the single... Much ado for nothing.
/thread close
They began accepting pre-orders on September 2011, 1 month after lunching the site.
This isn't the only Bitcoin forum there are many of them, I bet they began promoting the so call product line the second they lunched the website.
I'm a programmer, and I could tell you that no legit site will ever begin accepting orders on a Beta/Demo site. Done over 10k since '95.
Product Page
http://web.archive.org/web/20110923154722/http://butterflylabs.com/products/Order Page
http://web.archive.org/web/20110923170442/http://butterflylabs.com/pre-order-form/At the beginning of the rush, a-lot of people got fool and some are still being fool.
Look at XCrowd, they look legit, are cheaper then BFL's but I bet people aren't buying Pre-Orders as they did with many companies like BFL at the beginning.
XCrowd has a way better payment option than BLF ever did/have, shit even now... BFL wont accept PayPal as a Payment method. Bitcoin's or Wire Transfer ONLY...
Go buy an Item on Craigslist, eBay and ect. If the seller tells you to, send them a Money Order or a Wire Transfer will you DO IT?But I'm hoping that those new companies coming out are legit, I have my on two of them.