That price isn't surprising, esp. considering some groupbuy units were almost this high in BTC. Before a price was even announced I said 30$ - 50$ USD (which based on the assessment for both the public and the company I felt was fair). Hmm okay either I thought that or said it somewhere else, because I looked through my past posts and this is the only time I mentioned money before the unit was priced...
I think we can all agree that a farm of these units wouldn't be the best idea (although it'd be great to be able to have a few to hash away on work/library/friend's computer, esp. if a no-fuss setup could be created) and personally I think these units could be sold for ~$20 USD (non-wholesale) and be profitable for everyone involved (this is a very rough estimate, but given the current difficulty rate, cost of bitcoin, average cost of electricity - which is the major advantage here - assuming the unit is sold at 20$ + 5$ s/h, you could make your money back within a couple a weeks but even heavily padding that, lets say a month). Of course the focus is more likely on getting the second unit online than pumping out these little guys, but it seems likely that we'll see an option for user-end/consumer products being offered before the year is out... which is great because the ASIC market really needs more serious players.
I'm still hoping that ASICMiner will release more devices, and it would be even better if at least some were in the sub-1000$ USD range (although I'm sure they will sell out anything they produce). But yeah, it's a little easier (in my mind at least) to say "oh okay, I'm going to pay just 3
BTC" compared to "holy crap, there goes $400 from my bank account!", esp. considering a lot of BTC was gained before the price spike (I know 1
BTC = ~$270 at one point, however I believe that was a bubble that needed to pop and am more comfortable with the level it's at now... sorry to anyone who got burned though).
