Just received a competing product from another Internet audio company. SO many issues/problems too many to list.

Tip to The Outlaws....DO NOT launch a half-ass product. PLEASE take your time, and get it right! And please make sure the instructions are clear and concise.

Looking forward to the Outlaw processor when it becomes available.

This is a very good point. On the one hand, it's hard to get a 100% bug-free product - try to do that, and you may spend years trying to get it right and still miss something. On the other hand, you have to try very, very hard to get something as stable and useable as possible before you start taking people's money for it. And as for the instructions comment, I agree with you 100%.

One big improvement the Asians could make would be to hire native English speaking manual writers and not just use a cheap translation services that take native Mandarin, etc and run a manual through a program that translates literally.

Surely that's not an issue here <g>...we've been told repeatedly that the software is being designed/spec'd by Outlaw. I'm not sure why they needed to send an engineer to China to work with "developers" there? It's starting to sound like it is being DEVELOPED in China and perhaps just having some Outlaw tweaks folded in and THEN it will be physically manufactured/assembled in China as well.

Also, nobody does ANYTHING in China in the weeks preceding Chinese New Year. Pretty much the entire country stops doing meaningful work beginning a couple of weeks before, then folks disappear back to their hometowns for 1-2 weeks, and THEN they ease back into a normal work schedule over the next week or two. So to send someone to a Chinese engineering facility during that time frame is likely not going to result in a lot of useful work getting done. The New Year officially begins on January 23 this year so I'd say most of January and the first half of February is going to be pretty non-productive. People like inviting their foreign "partners" over during the pre-new years time so they can eat, drink, and be merry on laowai's dime while apologizing that key staff are on vacation already. Just sayin....

Welcome to China.

Designed and spec'd by Outlaw doesn't mean it has been built to spec. They are having some issues with the software and I think it is wise to send someone over to resolve those issues face to face vice over the phone or thru E-mail. Hopefully someone who is fluent in the language.

While it might be fun to speculate on what the nature of the delays are, the important thing is that the product is not yet shipping but is presumable inching its way toward delivery.

I have some experience with VERY a large firm that make products with complex embedded software that is used in the public safety arena and although the HW is built in many locations overseas the critical integration of that HW with custom software happens in the good ol' USA. No need to suggest that there has to be some "language barrier" or unusual foreign holiday schedule for SW trickiness to massively delay the delivery of usable product(s) that are almost certainly being "debugged" by 'muhricans...

I certainly hope that when the product is ready all the waiting will be accompanied by knock our socks performance and value.