I still recall Inaba throwing crap at Avalon customers for the size of our units. Except we got them early (enough) and they have been hashing for a little over a month. They are on spec, they work (99% of the time) and they did what was promised.
Now the story with BFL is entirely different....
Products disappeared overnight, and all prices for new customers doubled:
The Jalapeno disappeared and now has evolved into a two chip monster. Don't ask him about the number of chips shortages to come and how that will affect people down the line. The Mini-Rig also disappeared.
Now Inaba is virtually silent on the power and "being green" issue. He probably does not want to tell his customers that each BFL product is an electric hog compared to the original specs. What he was always adamant would never happen to his products. Their profitability over the long term is now closer to that of an Avalon (or much less) with two key differences.
A) The Avalons came out ~on time~ so each customer has plenty of Cash or Bitcoins. The BFL ASIC customers in contrast have lost all that time as "unrecoverable funds" from each delay after delay in the face of increasing difficulty. Their customers are late to the game.
B) The Avalons are actually upgradeable. The Avalons are 66~74GH/s while the BFL's are stuck in nuetral at 60GH/s....we hope....
BFL's 65nm chips perform nearly as bad as 110nm chips.
Inaba is also silent on the fact that their product has grown larger in it's footprint by the day. The compact nature and selling point is all but gone.
Inaba is silent on "competitive GigaHash performance" upgrades owed to their customers. (BFL hampsters are getting 60Gh/s units while Avalon customers got nearly 70GH/s+) Which means BFL customers now have the inferior product.
I could go on, but you'd pretty much get the idea...
Now the story with BFL is entirely different....
Products disappeared overnight, and all prices for new customers doubled:
The Jalapeno disappeared and now has evolved into a two chip monster. Don't ask him about the number of chips shortages to come and how that will affect people down the line. The Mini-Rig also disappeared.
Now Inaba is virtually silent on the power and "being green" issue. He probably does not want to tell his customers that each BFL product is an electric hog compared to the original specs. What he was always adamant would never happen to his products. Their profitability over the long term is now closer to that of an Avalon (or much less) with two key differences.
A) The Avalons came out ~on time~ so each customer has plenty of Cash or Bitcoins. The BFL ASIC customers in contrast have lost all that time as "unrecoverable funds" from each delay after delay in the face of increasing difficulty. Their customers are late to the game.
B) The Avalons are actually upgradeable. The Avalons are 66~74GH/s while the BFL's are stuck in nuetral at 60GH/s....we hope....
BFL's 65nm chips perform nearly as bad as 110nm chips.
Inaba is also silent on the fact that their product has grown larger in it's footprint by the day. The compact nature and selling point is all but gone.
Inaba is silent on "competitive GigaHash performance" upgrades owed to their customers. (BFL hampsters are getting 60Gh/s units while Avalon customers got nearly 70GH/s+) Which means BFL customers now have the inferior product.
I could go on, but you'd pretty much get the idea...
Why take it so personal? Because Josh honored you by your not ordering at BFL?
------------------------
Here is what happened shortly after I got my Avalon Hashing away at 67 to 74GH/s:
I realized that I should order something with ALOT more hashing power. I was about to invest 30k into a BFL Minirig. Keep in mind, I paid actual Fiat for my Avalon. I didn't just do what alot of miners did (as in charge up their credit cards nor take out a loan).
I paid money out from my own pocket and savings. It was my first mining rig. So it was a leap of faith to be honest. I looked over most products and decided on Avalon because it was one self contained unit. The BFL rig was a close second, but after witnessing Inaba/Josh and BFL Engineers queries, statements and attitude...they didn't look all that hot or right. This was back in October/September 2012.
Speed forward to almost the end of March. I decided after seeing my first miner racking up Bitcoins and watching the wallet fill up (and to be honest the price of BitCoins skyrocket) I decided I should buy one of the MiniRigs @ 1.5TeraHashes/s.
Problem. I had to clear the money through my family for such a large purchase. (I swear on Gods good name I am telling the Truth)
They were fine with it, then I mentioned Inaba's name. DAMN...
As soon as they heard that and they asked me if this was the notorious and infamous Inaba/Josh...they pulled the rug on that purchase. They asked me all the smart questions that everyone with common sense on this forum usually asks. Has this guy or his company shipped any units? My painful answer was a clear no.
Then I was asked if this was the guy in the CES video. I said yes, it was. Then they asked me why in the world I would order from this guy. I really only had one defense to go by, because he has promised to ship Minirigs of 1.5 TeraHashes/s. I explained that this was a good chunk of processing power at any mining pool. (They more or less understood the idea.)
The problem was, they didn't think Inaba would ship especially after several months. So they said "no way" not gonna happen. I couldn't get their approval.
------------------------
They instead asked me what was "Avalon" doing and if they couldn't buy "more modules" or more devices. I said they hadn't really mentioned much on the extra modules and at around that time the batches weren't open yet. No one was against buying more Avalons they just were rejecting the whole BFL idea.
In hindsight, I guess I was impulsive on that idea. I am glad I listened....about within the span of 10 days later, the Minirigs disappeared from BFL's website, replaced with an "OutofStock" message. Inaba then came out and said there were serious power issues. The Minirigs were going to be broken into several pieces. People did the calculations and came to the conclusion that a Minirig would take 8 to 10 kilowatts of power. More than is probably safe to run in a standard residence.
(Or risk getting a raided by the FBI or DEA for suspected pot growing from an abnormally high electric bill. It's an indicator they look for in case people don't know.)
So, as far as I can see, BFL entire product line fell apart....
Right now it is pretty much impossible to buy a Minirig. It is also impossible to get anything above a Jalapeno in the short term. So like it or not, I guess I will be ordering from Avalon once again. I am not as biased against BFL as most people think. I would buy from them if they fired Inaba for omni-potent incompetence and if they actually shipped in volume....well....and if the product actually remains stable over a short term of being in customers hands....which I think won't be the case as they are practically dev units at this point. (In my opinion)
====================
So the short story is, in my eyes, as well as in the eyes of others....BFL fell apart, raised their prices, and will probably be impossible to buy their high end devices...let alone the lower end ones.
This is the type of story where you have a rolling turd that just keeps getting bigger and bigger down hill. At each step BFL has always been one issue after another. To examine that for the last 9 months and not come to a conclusion that it is a bad buy in more ways than one....
It would be a great products to buy (well not really anymore) if it actually worked, and they actually delivered...but it just doesn't materialize en masse.
It sounds like we all paid a shit load of money to BFL a long time ago only to have a few developers, BFL employees, family members making really good money off our own money we sent them months ago. Our money basically made some working units to some "preferred" people. They apparently are picking and choosing who gets what. How nice.
