How do you know? I did not see 423 comments here. (do not mix your wishes with reality, even you -and me- would like it to happen)

And I would like to know that numbers.

I don't think I'm mixing what I wish for compared to the reality of what is...
No I can't speak for 422 people..
I can only speak for this here 423rd person typing this post.
I'm quite pragmatic.
I have always followed a strict personal policy of monthly setting aside EXACTLY so much "mad money" saving it or spending it for whatever I want.
If suddenly it was stated right now that the total was needed... complete payment in weeks or a month or two... even...
totaling $1500 or $1700
I'd be hard pressed to justify the pint of blood...dipping into other funds or using clean empty 0-balance credit cards (I absolutely loathe credit cards and the companies ...a (barely) necessary evil in my opinion)
My policy is that I don't make exceptions to my rule of how much more I can add to the top of my personal "mad money" ceiling...
since some other area of necessity starts to take the hit.
And if I started doing it for a neo...why not other things as well..eh?
( I'm pretty pragmatic, as a consequence of my stern pragmatic behaviour I am beholden to no man, company or outstanding bill or debt of any kind ..whatsoever..everything has been paid in full..When I die..no one will be owed anything. I'm one of the last "free men" so to speak...can't say it doesn't take effort )
wouldn't like it but..odds are I'd leave the race...
Knowing vs not knowing when roughly final payment is due means everything.

It means I can realistically budget and afford it
or
It is unrealistic, impossible and cannot continue financial support toward a purchase of a device and must drop out of the race as well ...
plain and simple.

So yeah it isn't wishing...it's assessing ...it's calculating.
I'm sure others will be doing likewise.

I doubt they'll know the numbers until people start putting down the down payments when the shop opens.

What I'd really like to know is:

"Down-payments to the amount of 350 EUR for a NeoN board or 480 EUR for complete Neo900 device are needed by XXXX-XX-XX to guarantee one will be built for you to purchase later. The sum of your prior donations (before interest) will count towards this.

"Current pricing estimates are shown at http://neo900.org/estimate and we hope to start shipping in QX XXXX. To claim your device, you will have up to X months from that date to pay the final purchase price, less your down payment (and [non-compound] interest applied to donations that were received before XXXX-XX-XX at a rate of 2% per month)."

p.s. joerg: I made a down-payment of 300 EUR last month because that's what was requested at the time, in order to guarantee a NeoN board; you're saying this has increased and a second payment is needed now?

p.p.s. for some future project or re-run, a monthly subscription sounds like something that should be accommodated if at all possible (including better automation for handling such payments). It could make for more steady project funding for R&D, and for risk purchases at intervals. It would help to more accurately gauge interest and estimate the number of devices to build, because you could see each month as subscriptions are created/cancelled. And I agree with endsormeans it makes it easier to budget and cover the final purchase price as a potential buyer.

@stevenc
contents of your pps are an excellent idea...

Hello stevenc!
[answers to rest of your questions follow in later posts]
Sorry for the inconvenience! Please just proceed to the shop and use your voucher to do a normal order, for payment method select "Bank transfer". In "special instructions" field mention "pre-start down payment". Then send me a reminder email with your order/invoice code and I set your down payment order status to "paid". This is a one-time thing I do for this particular case for compensating that I told you an incorrect value. It's not killing the project when one person (you) pays the "missing" 50 with final invoice/payment

cheers
jOERG

[edited by joerg_rw]yes, I meant as soon as you received your voucher mail, see http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...postcount=2456[/edit]

I might as well pay a bit more at this time, I get a rather good exchange rate on EUR currency at the moment, and I think you still pay interest on these down payments? [Edit: okay, you don't]

Please see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...st#post1464980 - we explain more details in the letters we send out per email recently. Publishing them follows in a week.
Also see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...85#post1469485 please.
/j

Is it possible to order a Neo900 board with only 1GB of ram hardware upgrade?

The standard NeoN board spec has 1GB of memory. Do you mean to add or remove something else from it?