there will be no orphaned devices since we start production for a device only _after_ we received payment for it. We do this since we a) don't have the money to build devices on our own and then offer them for sales, and b) since we got a kind of warranty from our fab that the devices will work exactly like the prototype, we won't need to worry about production desasters.
For same reason we won't allow concatenating or splitting of donations, we need a good estimation of the amount of devices that are really bindingly preordered. We will have sufficient spare boards for warranty and repair, don't worry. Sure you're more than welcome to preorder a 2nd device (by donating 100+ a second time), alas our margin (only thing we _theoretically_ could give up to reduce the cost of a 2nd device, see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...09#post1442609) is only a one digit percentage presumably, and that would be considered both a poor rebate and a spoiler for the guys investing much of their time into the project for way too little refund.

For the price reduction by higher volume of devices to build: this will mainly apply to the factor "R&D-expense / number-of-devices" Our estimated total R&D expense so far is very roughly a 150 EUR per device, when building a batch of 500 (or 75k total, to do the math for you), so when building twice the number of devices, the R&D cost per device will halve, iow 75EUR less. Volume discounts at sourcing components kicks in at differing levels depending on particular component and source, but very usually not before buying a 1000 components (for CPU/SoC however a zone of no more substantial rebates starts at as little as 100). Another few usual thresholds are 2000 and 2500.

/j