Had an account years ago and had it deleted; thinking there would never be an N900 like phone ever again. Decided to randomly check this forum to see what was going on, and find out Neo900 is days from starting pre-order/fundraiser. Oh the joy!!!!!! I've been shedding a tear every time someone mentioned the phone. I'll be keeping an eye on this page, and neo900.org.

If you din't use Crowdfunding, what are you going to use? I know your site, but how will you get it out there? You might have 600 people interested on the Neo900, which is not very much at all. You will HAVE to use something to get the phone out there. Thunderclap maybe? But really, you should use Kickstarter or Indiegogo. The Ubuntu Edge made 13 million dollars via Indiegogo, I imagine you could make a couple thousand via it. Look at the Pengpod, also used crowdfunding.

Is there going to be any type of security or protection for the "donated/preordered" money?

KS and IndieGG don't really offer protection either....
Maybe a working proto or finalised layout?

Unsure, but people might not be prepared to hand over nearly 500-1000 as a "donation"......

Hi kingoddball!
Thanks for mentioning your concerns.

I have a hard time answering this, since I'd inevitably add more guesswork and interpretation (about the meaning of your post) on top of what I conceive as, and guess is, guesswork in the previous post. So instead of answering let me just ask: can you please elaborate on what you suggest? AIUI you already noticed that KS et all don't provide what you expect us to provide (no idea how we could compete with those huge platforms). Though your "Maybe a working proto or finalised layout?" sounds interesting, I fail to completely grok the idea behind it.

Besides that please refer to all my posts in this thread which gave some hint on how we're going to handle stuff, and what / where are the risks which we clearly stated and will continue to communicate and further explain in the open. So it's about you and your confidence in our skills and honesty.
I don't see how your last sentence "people might not be prepared to hand over nearly 500-1000 as a "donation"......" is based on or related to anything I ever published here. Seems you're speculating here, and it went haywire. We already gave, and will give even clearer explanation of our fundraiser goals, which are like 5k, 15k, 25k (EUR total), to start (and of course try to finalize) certain steps of early prototyping which we will specify more clear cut on Monday. We ask for real donations (not "donations" with ticks around) to do so, and we will offer rebate (aka "full refund") on a final product for those who donate. Nobody however said "500..1000". The range of pledges starts at 10EUR and incentives come with 100EUR (rebate) and there are even higher incentives at 1500EUR (one of the prototypes). Enough of bean spilling.
Please elaborate on details of your protection idea!

cheers
jOERG

Hi byteninja2!

This is not a mass market product, it's not suitable (yet) for any "drive-by" customers who don't really get the idea and concept behind it, which is largely based on maemo5 compatibility and a community project called FPTF.
In short: we would be very happy with 600 customers, and we hope for as little as 200. Once we have a real product to show off, we can convince mass market mainstream customers and go to KS or whatever, where WYSIWYG for a working Neo900 with ported Fremantle is our best selling point. In the current state of this project we don't really want that class of customers, since we are sure we can't satisfy their expectations, and we don't even want a preorder volume in the range of several thousands since we don't even know if we could get that many N900 cases, mind you we didn't even start sourcing them.

Thanks for your dedicated contribution, and for now please help to spread the word about Neo900.

cheers
jOERG

PS: on a sidenote, KS is a nogo for us, since they don't want european 'customers'. And I don't think indiegogo is much better, and the fees are high.

afaict, the concern being expressed is over folks who expect to use mondays donation drive to purchase neo900s, instead of fund research towards its fruition and maybe preorder one.
the security being asked about is a legal guarantee of a refund of the full "donation", if you fail to make the neo900.
i have no idea whether thats a useful concept, but unless im seriously mistaken, its not what your donation drive is about.

im so excited! i hope i can get some kitchen magnets or tshirts or stickers for 150. i love that shite, reminds me of what im going to have someday.

sidepoints: actually, kickstarter very explicitly does offer security like that. and theyre asshats. and canonical raised $0 using indiegogo, not $18M, for the ubuntu edge. {which is an important distinction: if it wasnt risk-free, i doubt most of the backers would have pledged anything}

Maybe a proof of concept; Get Maemo to boot on Open Pandora Or GTA-04..
Software side seems harder.

Edit; I WILL be funding, just raising questions...

So whatever amount we donate, that'll be deducted from what we have to pay for the Neo900 or the board?

Yes! :-) 100% (or even >100%, as incentive)
for all donations of 100EUR and above

cheers
jOERG

GTA04 is planned for next future, maybe for now those two will do?
http://www.omappedia.com/wiki/Maemo_Getting_Started
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhEj8-p36Jk

However note please: We (GolDeliCo) are offering HARDWARE, the OS is up to community and you, the user. See http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91308
GolDeliCo will ship the Neo900 with some OS installed to do tests of the hardware, but will NOT provide a ported Fremantle OS.
We however will support the developers who are already busy with porting fremantle, e.g. by handing out the prototypes to them. This is one of the reasons why we need funding now, so we can build those prototypes to facilitate FPTF

cheers
jOERG