Hey I just want to thank Tom publicly for all the work he's put into the fpga project to bring a really solid product to the market. I found btcfpga.com the day it went live and right away made a pretty big $$ bet that Tom would come through. As customers, we've had our ups & downs waiting for delivery - but Tom has worked tirelessly to fulfill orders and make good on his promises.
The MMQ is looking and working better than ever. When Tom saw problems happening with his engineering partner, he moved quickly to let him out of the commitment, getting as much hardware back as possible, and then did what he could to satisfy waiting customers. This includes taking losses due to faulty firmware that fried some of the earliest customer cards. His RMA policy has always been "Send it back to me immediately and I will replace it immediately."
He made a quick decision to move to professional assembly in order to guarantee that the product deliver in a shorter time with maximum quality. When Tom ran into supply problems for fpgas, instead of just shrugging and making apologies, he spent countless hours on the phone until he found a solid source that can actually deliver. None of this includes the time and money he spent just to get to PCB stage.
The firmware and available mining software needed to evolve with the product in order to scale. Unforeseen issues with Windows drivers, USB hub compatibilities and the original firmware issues have created problems achieving max hashrate. To remedy this Tom again made the choice in the customer's favor by enlisting top developer talent to rewrite the firmware, solve USB driver issues and maximize hashrates - keep in mind he's paying for development on open source software. In fact, he continues to pay for further development with eyes towards even higher rates and compatibility with hotter bitstreams. Every one of these decisions has gone against his bottom line profit and has been 100% in favor of the customer.
As a customer I have the choice of where to buy, and where to make my ASIC bets too. I'd rather have my ASIC pre-sale money sitting with Tom than anywhere else at this point. He's demonstrated many times over that he is trustworthy and ethical in his business dealings. Sure, he's aggressive and sets some pretty tough goals - its what motivated, driven, risk-taking entrepreneurs do. You can choose to hitch a ride or not - its up to you.
Full disclosure: I've never personally met Tom, I don't work for him, I didn't get paid to write this. I'm just a customer and a big fan of what he's trying to do
Cheers,
buzzdave