Didn't Avalon also state that Batch #2 was going to be 500 units? I took "build to order" to mean they will not order the parts till they have been paid..not to mean that they will build as many as everyone wants.
I think it means that they will build what the customer orders, in the quantity that the customer requires, and not a single unit more. The 500 (600?) cap is because of capacity in the delivery time window. If they only get orders for 100 units, they will only make 100 units. They don't keep inventory of finished product, only parts. Think of it as the difference between a shipyard and a toy company - the shipyard doesn't have a stock of finished ships to sell you unless one of their customers had a bankruptcy. By only accepting bitcoins, they're not exposed to that risk.
I'm sure one person could order 1000 units if (s)he wanted, but only the first 500 would be delivered in the time window.
I think we are in complete agreement.. you just stated my thoughts better than I did.
Hence, my suggestion that they initially limit it to one unit per customer, so that ( in the decentralized spirit of bitcion ) .. as many miners as possible have at least one godlike hashing unit... if they don't come up with 500(600?) unique customers, by all means, then open it up to multiple units per customer.. but please at least give everyone a chance so that one (or a few) customers can't buy up the entire batch, simply cuz they refreshed the buy page 2 seconds quicker than everone else...
thanks,
Sigg