Fellow Zuiks:
I've had several discussions with a couple people at Imagek and I've gotten
an interesting "image" of the company. First of all, the people at the show
are NOT marketing types. The lines that the engineers are saying are almost
humourous in their brutal honesty and their lack of ability to understand
basic questions. Yes, they are true engineers. Talking to them is a hoot
as they don't comprehend normal life.
That all said, the "working prototypes" at the show are using smaller sensor
arrays than the production units. Also, they are juryrigged into temporary
"engineer-made" housings as the castings haven't been manufactured yet.
Supposedly there are several working models at the show.
According to my primary contact in California, Beta (Alphas to be brutally
honest) models will be sent out to select people for extensive testing next
month. I've gotten on the short list for the Beta test, so do expect full
Olympus OTF testing. Please, everybody, don't inundate them trying to get
on the list--the initial beta will only be to 20 or so people and I'd rather
not get bumped. <g> If there are specific things you'd like me to test,
let me know off-line.
All I can suggest is to be patient. Just because it looks pretty rough at
this point doesn't mean that it won't be a functional thing of beauty in a
few short months. Besides, what has Kodak, Fuji, Ilford or Agfa shown to
compete with it?
Time-to-Market is a serious problem with anything like what Imagek is doing.
There is a lot of new technology crammed into a small space. The sensor
array is very thin and there are a lot of custom electronics. The physical
housing is "easy" in comparison to what's inside. These things can easily
take a couple years to develop and we've only heard of it for several months
now.
The marketing department is just getting spooled up with this and I expect
pricing to be a bit more realistic for the general consumer market. They
are going to target the medical/forensic markets too.
Ken N.
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