Peace be unto you as well...
Read the following with the understanding that I've only done a real cursory review of writings on this company. but what is an objective person to think of a company that:
-demos its product via a videotape and not the actual product where people can get their hands on it.
-says its markets are thousands of miles from the US where it is selling its stock.
-has a partnership with a corporation in China where the magical product will be produced and which also represents a market (one that American cigarette and soap makers coveted for many years, being dazzled by the potential represented by billions of people).
-has a price which, by virtue of the components involved, seems far too low regardless of the cheap labor availability in China - flat panel screens are not as costly as they are because you've got teams of Bill Gates' assembling them. The other technologies in this all-in-one whizbang also aren't cheap to develope and include into one small package, yet the price is to be about that of a medium speed well equipped Pentium computer without monitor?
It reminds me of a prototype product I once saw many, many years ago - an actual model of a new type of personal (2 seater) helicopter called the MonteCopter. It's genius was that instead of having the complex package of engine plus gearings that are involved with changing the pitch of the rotor blades they would be replaced by putting 2 small pulse jets at the tips of the rotors themselves. No gear boxes that might fail, no reciprocating engine that might fail, all kinds of complex and therefore expensive parts and assemblies no longer needed.
Simplicity itself, so the cost would be at a level where the MonteCopter would be found in every garage.
As I said I did see a prototype, in a hotel, as I recall. Looked really cool and beautifully finished, with slick brochures and well dressed salesmen to explain things. Investors were being invited (Washington residents only - this being in Seattle) to "get in on the ground floor". The phrase was prescient as it turned out.
It never got off the ground - neither the copter nor the company. I have no idea how many investors lost how much money after seeing this cool "technology of the future". It didn't work because, I believe, there was no way to run jet fuel out to the engines at the tips of the rotors - a small detail someone overlooked. And I think it still needed to have the rotor blades pivotable to change angle to provide the necessary lift. Of course this is all memory of something that probably was some 30 years ago or more.
But it sure did look wayyyy cool...
Dee Jay |
