Re: [Gumstix-users] USB not a host port

[Kim H. <ki...@ki...>]

> I've been pushing Gordon to put one (without release dates as a 
> possible compromise to his legacy desire to close-source development 
> plans) on the wiki -- he's concerned to some degree (I think the 
> validity of the concern is debatable) that people won't buy version X 
> if they can see there's a version X+1 on the horizon...
> 
> I'm not sure that this is necessarily the case though with Gumstix; it 
> strikes me that our customers might well be more than happy buying a 
> version X gumstix to do prototyping/development on, then deploy on X+1, 
> particularly since the cost of (X & X+1) is still pretty low compared 
> to many of our competitors.  *Not* telling our customers, for example, 
> that we have a USB host version to be released "soon" might drive them 
> to a competitor who does either have that feature, even if the 
> competitive solution is otherwise less satisfactory than gumstix would 
> be.
> 
> So, you customers, what do you think?  More likely to buy if we tell 
> you what features are going to be coming soon, or less likely to buy 
> now since you'll just wait?

For myself I just want to be sure that the software set for a particular
board is stable, or becomes stable. So that the kernel for a particular
board run can be snapshotted as stable for that board.

I don't think that every application is feature hungry. If you could come out
with a gumstix that is 1/2 the size but doesn't have an MMC interface I'd also
be quite interested in that. Different features for different targets markets
I guess.

Actually, on the subject of stable releases. Are you tagging stable
kernel releases in such a way that we can checkout a particular stable
release for a particular model of board easily? Maybe you are doing that
already.

So long as I could be sure that there would not be a problem getting
model X for a while I wouldn't be stopped buying. If I thought that model
X would be difficult to obtain quickly and model X+1 has different mechanical
properties, that may imply different enclosure machining, I'd be included
to wait.

  - Kim