You make a good and interesting point, though it's not related to the original topic of this thread.

Anyway, I agree, the amount of time/effort a company spends on marketing a pre-order product could potentially be used as an indicator of the company's technical capabilities.  In this case, I would argue that blackarrow probably already had an established marketing team as part of their company prior to their ASIC announcement.  Since they're on payroll, might as well use them.

For me personally, I find a company's history to be a better indicator of their merits than anything else.  Like a person, you should always bet on a company not changing their habits.  That isn't to say that they can't change, but more times than not they will repeat their mistakes.  BFL is a prime example.  It seems a lot of people forgot that they pulled their same shenanigans back with their original FPGA based product.

From what I know of Blackarrow, their customer service has been stellar, but I recall them tripping on a few early delivery schedules with their Icarus clones (IIRC their FPGA supplier fell through).  Their habits likely won't change, which is to say that I believe they will deliver (as you seem to agree), but may still run into trouble during their early shipping (as do most companies, to be honest).