General consensus is to invest in the bitcoins themselves, although if you bought at 1200 last week, you'd be down 25% right now, so...
If you're looking to spend money now, and get devices now, hit up the bitmine threads in group buy. They ship this week, and will ROI even with only half of december mining.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/group-buy-clos-shipped-giveaway-bitmain-antminer-180-ghs-300-units-364342 They're not a great long term investment, but they're available now, and are the most likely thing to return the investment quickly. You can take the earnings from that, and reinvest in the new stuff coming out in feb 2014.
That's BitMain, not BitMine. Different companies. BitMain is currently auctioning/selling the AntMiner BitMain is only selling preorders for the CoinCraft series of miners.
apologies, yes. i typoed. :-p as you did. ;-)
WAHAHA! Too funny! BitMain and BitMine are just too similar.
But I tell you what, BitMain makes a damn nice miner. They seemingly came out of nowhere with one if the best built miners I have in my possession. The only thing that is holding them back from massive success is questionable distribution methods. Auctions and group buys, why?
From the sounds of things, it's their production volumes. They had an excellent week, and built 150 units? Sounds like low budget pick-and-place, or manual builds. And the auctions and group buys sound like a small company that's keeping their head on their shoulders; frankly. No delusions of grandeur.
I'm super excited to get my hands on a couple of their chips and build my own system, but the 10k minimum chip buy is out of my price range. Requiring that level of commitment also speaks towards a smaller company... either they need that much to get their manufacturers attention, or they don't have the capital to risk on smaller, riskier ventures. I would guess they were planning an ASIC, and found themselves unexpectedly ahead of the other manufacturers, and are rushing to capitalize.
Either way, excellent chips, excellent miners, and shipping early enough to be nearly profitable. Now to find a way to buy samples...