[Arm-netbook] The future of EOMA-68

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 10:20 AM, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:

> In fact, quite a bit has happened, but there have obviously been setbacks,
> mostly to do with the choices made in getting hardware into people's hands.
> Had different choices been made in, say, 2013 then a broader audience might
> have had something to use by now, but it seems that a strategy was followed
> that might have seemed the best and fastest route to market at the time, but
> which in hindsight proved to be a dead end.

 and that right there is valuable.  just like edison [finding 1,999
ways *not* to make a lightbulb] - success happens mostly through
committment and persistence to try different things...

 *re-evaluating all the time* exactly as you say, simon.

> The one thing that I wanted to emphasise in that article is that hardware has
> been produced, which means that the hard part should be out of the way. But I
> guess only Luke knows the status of the crowd-funding campaign and the "last
> mile".

 yep.  costings.  it's the details.  laser-cut steel masks: $1,000.
having to do 5 prototypes with the contract manufacturers: $2,500.
MOQs for some of the components: $3,000.

 all of this has to be taken into account, based on a MOQ (which i'm
still likely to set at 250), *all* those NREs have to be taken into
account and paid for out of the up-front committed money from people.

 bearing in mind that the unit cost of assembly for the EOMA68-A20
board is to be around $60 (in qty 250) and the micro-engineering board
around $30 (in qty 250), those NREs above (total $6500) divided by 250
comes to an extra $26, the unit *COST* comes to an amazingly high $USD
116.

 .... nothing like the $35 for a wandboard or whatever it's called, is it?

but that's just how it is.

l.