Quote:

1. The price I mentioned was for a system, you spoke of a motherboard alone. Please don't compare apples and oranges.

2. Since the X5000 isn't publicly released yet, are you *really* sure that the price you got to pay for that *motherboard* is the same as what the final end-user price will be, and not some kind of discounted "betatester" price á la the X1000 "betatester" program? You actually claim that the final prices are set?

3. Here is from the horses mouth: "As for pricing. we are hoping that the new Cyrus Plus board with the P5020 will be slightly less expensive than the Nemo board, but no promises at this stage". This was in July 2013, almost two years ago, and the meter has been ticking ever since.

4. People here are discussing the cost of the CPU. What we really should discuss is the cost of R&D since the volume will be so small. They must have had quite high up-front development costs to that third party commercial design company they are hiring. They have actually designed several different prototype motherboards:

Cyrus Prototype 1



CyrusPlus Prototype 1



CyrusPlus Prototype 2



A loop of testing and new revisions after this is probably a given. Adding cost. Every time. This is what Trevor said about the X1000 development cost:

"All-in-all the NRE costs to produce the original prototypes, revision 2 modifications and new prototypes for hardware testing burnt almost $200K in pre-funding. That is the reality of the situation. If we could sell 200,000 units that would only add one dollar to the sales price. However, if we only sold 200 that that would add US$1000 to the sales price"

So how many do they realistically predict to sell to this ever-shrinking "market" that is probably already all-saturated by the X1000? The few hundred people actually prepared to pay that kind of money for an OS4 system with that backwards level of performance already did buy the X1000. And technically speaking the X5000 won't offer much that the X1000 didn't. Most of them wont go from €3000 to €6000 just to have two machines that are almost the same. AeonKit have to distribute their R&D costs on their sales predictions. And they can't be too optimistic here, they had better be realistic if they want to see their money back. This affects the price a great deal.


5. Trevor estimated the price of the X1000 to be "north of 1500 quid" at The Vintage Computing Festival 2010. Years later, when the product actually shipped for the first time and all R&D costs during the past years was added to the picture, it landed just below £2.000 AFAIK, making it surpass the $3.000 USD mark, excluding shipment and VAT (which is rather high for EU customers). In that interview linked to above from summer 2013 he said he *hoped* the price for the X5000 would be lower than X1000. But that was also years ago, and the product has been in R&D ever since and only now reaches a commercial state. The product could very well end up being "slightly less expensive than the Nemo board", but in my view it's not entirely impossible that it will be "slightly more expensive" either. For sure it won't be 25% or even 50% of the nemo board. Which is what could have made a difference.


So pampers, please don't throw groundless FUD accusations around you, especially when you are not contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way yourself. That's not very nice!