While I admire gonk's continued positive attitude towards Outlaw, I think that most would agree that Outlaw really screwed up on launching the 997.

Having said that, I do not believe that it was totally their fault. Only idiots would pre-announce a product if they knew there were major problems with it, and I don't believe that the Outlaw folks are idiots. More than likely, they believed that this product was closer to production status because that's what they were told by the Inkel engineering team developing the core products and functionality (Inkel is Sherwood USA's mother ship in Korea).

But before we blame the engineering team, we should all remember that these products are hugely complex, build around advanced processing and computing chips that execute in numerous modes of operation, driven by complex suites of software. Getting it right, on time, is really tough ... I have worked in and around complex semiconductors for over 30 years, and have experienced and observed these problems first hand.

Having said this, it really is time for Outlaw to provide additional update on the status of the 997 for those continuing to patiently wait. The faithful is starting to lose faith in growing numbers, and the risk of not acting is that many more of the faithful will look elsewhere to get what they want.

C'mon Outlaw, it's time for an update.

Pete