I read about several different shipping dates for the MK2. First it was February, then March and now it seems to be April or May.
Is this date on the end of April realistic or do we have to wait until the middle of the year or later till the first MK2 is shipped?
It would be much help if we had a fixed date even if it's on August or so.
I know that it isn't easy to say a fixed date for a project, but it would be great if we know a realistic date when we can expect our box.

And what about a new newsletter?

It would be fine if anybody from empeg could answer the questions.
Thanks
Rene

> It would be much help if we had a fixed date even if it's on August or so.

The shipping date is fixed to be two days after we receive completed players from our manufacturer.

The date we receive players depends when we receive components. Some components, such as tantalum capacitors, were on 20 week lead times - others were on 1 YEAR lead, so we had to redesign for alternatives. The reason given by the component fabricators for the shortage of surface mount passive components is the recent explosion in mobile phone production.

I know some of you think that these excuses are wearing thin, but that's how it is. Sourcing 413,000 surface mount components is not as easy as phoning Farnell and handing over your card details.

Until we have a definite delivery date for every single component we cannot commit to the surface mount run - the penalty for booking time on the robotic production line and subsequently missing it would be astronomical.

We have a tentative date booked for surface mount assembly to begin in mid April. I believe our cut-off date to commit to this was last Friday, and at that time we had some outstanding components to source for the display board. We're hoping to resolve the issues early this week and determine whether we can still go ahead with the April run. If we can, units will start to ship late April, with the bulk of that batch going out during May.

These delays are as frustrating for us as they are for you - probably more so, as we've invested hundreds of thousands of pounds on components that are sitting on the shelf.

> And what about a new newsletter?

It's sitting on my PC whilst Daniel finishes updating the mailing list. I hope to get it out today, but in the meantime I'll post the interesting bit of it (Mk.2 specifications) to the General forum here.

Rob

Are there any good or bad news about the shipping date in the meantime?
What about the tentative date booked for surface mount assembly in mid April and start shipping at the end of April?

We can't quote a fixed shipping date. If you would prefer for us to just round it to the nearest quarter (as the rest of the industry tends to) then fine, let's say shipping by Quarter 3.

The reason we can't provide a fixed date is because this is entirely out of our hands. The product is manufactured by a contractor, and that contractor is responsible for sourcing the components. To an extent it's out of their hands as well right now, because some of those components simply are not available anywhere in the world. Specifically, we can't get enough surface mount tantalum capacitors, so it now looks like we'll have to produce a new design and PCB layout for an alternative component. This will further delay production by a minimum of two weeks, pushing shipping into mid to late May.

I'm considering rebuilding the queue (to reduce it to those who are contactable and still interested in ordering) so we'll at least be able to provide better delivery estimates once the production run starts.

Rob

OK, I already replied to this once, I'm going mad :-)

Rob