[thomasruns]

It's kickstarter which means it won't actually ship until at least a year after it claims. And there's no way they're going to provide a decent keyboard, touchpad and screen for $99 and still make a profit.

It'll ship late and be probably 2x that cost at which point you should just get a chromebook. Or, ya know, use the laptop you already have.

[ajiang]

Anyone who is in SF is welcome to come by our office and play with the Superbook. A bunch of our SF buddies and old batch mates have already done so - but always glad to turn skeptics into at least slightly less negative individuals ;)

[Mithaldu]

Don't invite people on the internet to make a trip to your office. You know perfectly well that the vast majority of people reading here aren't even anywhere close to you.

Show video of a person actually using it. Unedited, continuous shot. Right now it looks like you're just plugging a phone into a macbook and then have the macbook fake up some stuff in the video.

[chadfurman]

There have been some crappy kickstarters, but I must say I've gotten some great deals on Kickstarter and they were delivered. Some projects do fail, and some projects rock.

[api]

Very sad that Kickstarter has earned such a reputation.

[Uptrenda]

True, but sadly he's right. I still get emails from projects I funded YEARS ago that have still yet to ship a single product and they're still trying to make promises.

I'd argue that these platforms create a perverse incentive for people to exaggerate their experience and/or product to appeal to the clueless masses but I guess that's the same with most kinds of marketing ...

[api]

The same perverse incentive underlies all marketing. If you tell the truth and make sane claims you lose to flash, grandiosity, and viral gimmicks. Over time the whole system runs over a cliff. It's sort of a game theory meltdown thing.

It is eventually self correcting, but that usually involves a market crash and a Game of Thrones style winter where the junk is purged.

[cstejerean]

But not very surprising. Projects promising the impossible raise impossibly large sums of money and attention, attracting more people trying to do the same. Since these are the projects that get most of the attention, they end up driving the reputation of the platform. Projects trying to accomplish reasonable things for a reasonable amount of money can barely raise enough money and when they do they fly under the radar.

[flukus]

Considering the amount of outright scams on sites like this they should be happy that this is the reputation.

[pkaye]

Looking at the background of the company founder I don't have much hopes on this one succeeding.

[ajiang]

Curious, what is it about our backgrounds that make you feel worried?

[pkaye]

No previous experience developing hardware. Lots of previous kickstarters failed because of unanticipated costs along the development process. For example they didn't anticipate the tooling costs associated with the mold for the product case.