I have no information or insight into this.  In fact, I doubt that Dave could answer this either.  Speaking from my experience with other ASIC suppliers though, it is exceedingly difficult to give estimates accurate to even a week with Asic timelines involved- Many different suppliers, individuals and sources must come together all at once for the date to be hit.  We put the same pressure to deliver fast and reliably on our suppliers that we feel from our customers, and they often give us overly-optimistic date estimates.  We add time estimates to compensate for this, but it doesn't mean we will be more accurate than what we were given.  If anything the Bitfury team tends to come closer to their estimates than other suppliers, if that is any consolation.

If we give you an estimate and something outside our control causes us to miss that estimate, it reflects very poorly on us regardless of whether it was preventable.  I can assure you that A. we will be doing everything we can to anticipate blockers and delays to prevent or work around them, and B. we will communicate timelines with you as soon as we are confident that we can hit them.  We won't be "shipping in two weeks" forever like other companies.  Thanks for understanding.

I'm hoping that Dave & company are farsighted enough to pump some of their profits back into more product so that "Batch" becomes meaningless and "Off the Shelf" becomes the name of the game.

Sorry for leaving you hanging Just got my replacement M-board today since my first was DOA (RPi wasn't powering from it). Here are some pics of it set up and hashing. Only have the first 2 fans on, can't wait to fill up the rest of the M-board in October so I can kick on the other fans!  

http://imgur.com/a/cJalG

Thanks Dave and team BitFury!

I suspect you've never organized a manufacturing for 100 units ... Honestly - that is such a pain! And if you have to go through that for every 100 units - that's a lot of pain. It is much much better to go through that once and get 10k units. Also, pricing on components can be several times more expensive for small quantities. Plus, factories don't like it when they have to retool their machines for just 100 units (and as a result you get some insane prices for assembly service).

That's just my 2 cents. I'm not necesarily voting for or against the option. I just want to clarify that it most likely doesn't make sense for what we're discussing here.

Yep, that's fine. I'm pretty sure there is a way to find some middle option.

It is just that engaging with the whole manufacturing is by itself quite a pain, and then when you add the risks - from the moment you order all components until you have assembled (and not yet tested) products in your hand that's usually just a few weeks there alone. Considering also the current pace of new miners being introduced - that makes any long(er)-term plans quite risky by themselves. And by longer term - I mean something as short as 3 months.

good points, there's a lot of competition though and AM will be on gen 2 by end of the year likely

Power consumption is far higher on ASICminer chips vs Bitfury chips and AM does not support stratum only getwork.

As far as mining equipment goes, we are now entering the level when the question asked is how many GH/s can I have up and running with the existing Electrical Service.

hmm let's see 25gh for $1300 or 2.5 blades for about 10btc.  That's current price on website I'm not sure if it was more months ago when you preordered.  Wasn't 400Gh $20k which is basically the same as 40 blades or approximately 16-20btc  Also I see plenty of people having issues with build quality with bitfury so a 2nd hand BFL unit is probably better.  Yes power consumption is better which is probably not a consideration for most miners although it should be in the long run which might be offset by better build quality.

Almost everyone who has bought any AM hardware.

Hell, I got what may be considered the first AM USB - outside AM - 13/14-May - 4 months ago
So far it has made about 0.9137202236 BTC ... roughly

No one who paid the AM BTC price for an AM USB has made their BTC back unless they solo mined and got lucky - or sold it and ripped of the person they sold it to - just like AM

I guess some of the early Block Erupter Blades may have got their BTC back?
If you got a Block Erupter Blade on 13/14-May and it has hashed at 12GH/s since then, it will have made to date (4 months) 32.7302766667 BTC ... roughly ... and last diff change ~11 days, it made less than 1BTC

So ... yeah ... most of those who bought AM hardware lost BTC doing it.

The same AM USBs you can now buy for 0.17BTC or less, were sold initially for around 1.9BTC
My guess they are still over 100% mark up ... times 20, gives at least 2000% that literally many thousands of these were sold at that price
No they are not 2000% now, but they were almost certainly that or more initially.