
Parallella Pre-Order Shipping Update - matt42
http://www.parallella.org/2014/04/10/parallella-pre-order-shipping-update/
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PaulKeeble
Up until November 2013 all the news was of technical difficulties in the board
causing delays. Repeated redesigns and fixes. However in November 2013 we
finally got told the reason why we really didn't have boards, 10 months after
the due delivery date was they didn't have the money. Worse than that the
Kickstarter had never been enough money to make the boards, they always needed
external funding that they had no idea they would get. In the Kickstarter this
was never mentioned and it wasn't mentioned until November 2013 to the
backers.

That is not the way business is done. They should have either made the
kickstarter price higher or more backers or they been honest upfront in that
pitch that the product needed additional seed money not coming from
kickstarter. Rather than lying to your backers for over a year about the
nature of the delays.

None of this is how you make friends and I wont deal with them again. They
offered me a refund in November which I never got but at least they finally
shipped my boards. This is one kickstarter backing I regret, not because I
don't want the product but I don't want the guys who make it in business
anymore. I don't want companies that behave this way to be rewarded, such
levels of dishonesty (and potentially IMO criminal activity and certainly a
breach of Kickstarters conditions) just should not be rewarded with success.

~~~
wmf
This sounds par for the course for the Bitcoin world; maybe they should move
into that market.

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lutusp
> We are happy to announce that after an endless string of challenges and
> unlucky events, the Parallella board is finally moving into production!

Really, this is the sales pitch? Moral: don't let engineers write your
marketing copy. Customers don't need to hear how close to disaster the
transition to production was -- it reflects poorly on the end product.

I would have said, "We're now about to ship a product that meets our own high
expectations, and we're ready to share it with you." You know, something
encouraging.

~~~
pessimizer
This is "E2E": If you're not an specialist engineer, you will have no idea
what to do with a Parallella - and if you are, you'll know you want one from
the description and the specs, not vapid marketing copy.

~~~
lutusp
> This is "E2E"

Yes, that may be the intent, but not all buyers of such products are engineers
themselves. Some of them are nontechnical and know what to look for, but have
to make snap judgments based on the minimum of information.

> ... not vapid marketing copy.

The author of the linked article certainly succeeded in avoiding vapid
marketing copy. :)

~~~
pessimizer
>not all buyers of such products are engineers themselves

I'm guessing this is especially true with this board because of Kickstarter
exposure and coverage. I think that the ones bought by the non-engineers will
end up dusty in desk drawers next to a thousand Raspberry Pis.

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jwise0
It is in fact the case that they're shipping; I've had one arrive in the mail.

My first impression ( _from just looking at it and not powering it on yet ..._
) is that the board feels like what Raspberry Pi should have been. The Z7020
is a pretty serious chunk of FPGA. I'm not convinced that I believe that their
ASIC is any more powerful than the big chunk of programmable logic that's
sitting right next to it, though I suppose that for _some_ DSP-like
applications, there could be a pretty clear win.

On the other hand, I supported it because I like the idea of a crowd-funded
tapeout, and wanted mostly just to help prove that that would be a successful
strategy. It's not clear to me that I'll _ever_ have time to actually power
one on, let alone do much playing with it...

Has anyone written any code for it yet? How would you describe the experience
of programming for it?

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SeanKilleen
Anyone else think they're missing a bit of an opportunity by not calling these
messages "parallella-grams"?

I'll show myself out.

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CraigJPerry
Looks like later buyers are shipping first? On the forums it's posters with 1
post who are reporting they now have shipping numbers / delivery dates.

None of them have turned up on the "show us your parallela" thread yet
unfortunately.

~~~
mrbrowning
They might be people who ordered boards with the Zynq 7020 SoC, which is
shipping either first or more quickly for some reason.

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rurban
Pathetic. Still waiting for one and a half year.

