Hi...

1. We too are sorry if good people are leaving, but a Pegasos I vs. a Pegasos II does not stop a good developer. There are plenty of Developers that still only have Betatesters or April 1/2 that are productive (and still appreciate they received their board(s) for free).

2. We originally offered the upgrade when we though the April patches would solve all the Articias problems - so *only* the CPU card was being swapped. They did not completely -- especially for the G4. Nevertheless, instead of just swapping out the CPU card, we then decided to *still* honor the upgrade offer, which we did for many people and swapped the entire system. Unfortunately, a number of people, including Resellers, took advantage of this generous gesture to cheat Genesi. For example, they purchased complete units at upgrade prices and sold them at full price or they purchased the upgrade online, but never had a Pegasos I. When we understood this was happening we stopped the offer until we could regulate the situation better.

3. In the meanwhile, we sold many systems to corporate customers and in fact could not satisfy this demand. We have nearly managed to organize our supply chain better, but this has taken time. We purchase components 13-16 weeks out -- before production. Can you see the dilemma? This can be especially problematic as some corporate customers pay only at 60 days after delivery.

We will make good on the upgrade offer when we are ready. Fortunately, there are many good developers working away on the platform and we hope this latest effort will further the opportunity for both developers and the users who benefit from their work.

What Vesalia did was very clever. They purchased complete G4 systems and then swapped out with Pegasos II G3 owners for the G4 CPU card only, got the G3 back and then sold the whole system to a new user. Good thinking!

R&B

[ Edited by bbrv on 2004/8/24 1:35 ]