What I should have said was if you want to get into ASICS you will only be able to do by full payment pre-orders thus transferring a debateable amount of risk from the manufacture to the consumer.
That won't be the case once BFL catches up on their pre-orders. They'll be looking at a turnaround time of a couple of days from order to shipping then - faster than Dell can build me and ship me a computer and certainly faster than the two months or so I have to wait for built to order furniture that I've paid for.
ASIC pre-order customers have taken substantial risks - there's no doubt about that - but the option of waiting until BFL pre-orders were cleared has always been there. Those who pre-ordered wanted to be the first to get ASICs because they realise that every ASIC which hits the market diminishes the profitability of all other ASICs. Most were hoping to have their ASICs in hand before the block reward halved and thought that they'd have a significant head start on ASIC mining before a large number of ASICs were delivered by different vendors. They viewed the potential reward as being worth the risk.
The big thing to remember is that this product has one purpose - to generate income in the form of Bitcoins. That people will take huge risks in pursuit of Bitcoins has been demonstrated time and time again.
I agree for the most part.
Vendors catching up still IMO doesn't justify the risk shedding that is involved initially.
I understand the early adopters likely (or at least should have) done a risk reward analysis and decided for themselves, again I still don't agree with how the manufactures transfer risk from themselves to the consumer when I believe any risk they shed should have been shoulder by them. I think those that took a risk had enough already without taking on additional risk that I think the manufacture should have shouldered.
BTW thank you for not attacking me (like someone who works for an ASIC vendor and some other random troll did) and trying to discuss this with me. As a forum and BTC newb this stuff fascinates me and appreciate being corrected politely.