Everyone's obviously concentrated on the Microdigital stuff because it's the most controversial; I agree that there probably should be more coverage of other stuff.

PS: Aces, eh? Suuure. I'll pay your 8 and raise you 20.

Chris. drobe. etc.

Here is the Dutch text of a portion of Newsshot19 relating to delivery dates quoted verbatim.

"Is de Omega er voor de kerst ?

Na 4 maanden van stilzwijgen heeft MicroDigital dan eindelijk een nieuws over de Omega op hun website neergezet waar we allemaal op zaten te wachten. Volgens hun Newdesk van 26 november is de machine nu in productie gegaan met de verwachting dat de eerste machines voor Kerstmis de deur uit gaan. Wij weten echter nog niet of wij op onze beurt dan voor kerst de eerste machines klaar zullen hebben, maar wij zullen onze uiterste best doen om dit te laten gebeuren."

My translation;

Will the Omega arrive in time for Christmas ?

After 4 months of silence Microdigital has finally posted the news about the Omega we have all been waiting to hear. According to Newsdesk dated 26/11/2002 the Omega is in production the expectation that the first machines will be dispatched before christmas. We do not know if we will get some of the first machines produced but we will try our best to achieve this.

Presumably Desk is one of those members of the press who have been spreading false rumours about Omega delivery dates.

If you doubt the reliability of this information then try looking here;
http://groups.google.com/groups?
q=26+Glover+Microdigital+group:comp.sys.acorn.*
&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=comp.sys.acorn.*
&selm=BA127C22.23DA8%25mike%40IconTechnology.net&rnum=1

Another point I was assured by Frank Kraai from Desk/Microdigital Europe in a long phone call a couple of weeks ago that production Omegas will be shipped with working floppy disks. Thus as it appears that the Omega still does not have a working floppy drive (or is this mis-reporting again from the Iconbar?) then can the machines given out at Nieuwegein be regarded as production machines?
Regards

Don't forget all it takes for him to set the record straight is a b***dy email to the press stating the *facts*. He hasn't done that

And also, why remove the Omega news pages from their site? Trying to keep the press out even further? if they have nothing to hide and everything at MD is going along swimmingly, then why not tell people? Something smells.

I think Drobe pointed it out very well in referring to the hi-tech invention 'the phone' as a very reliable means of spreading hard facts.

From this distance, it looks like MD have created a bloody shambles from a PR standpoint, and really need to re-assess their approach, unless they want to be another broken UK business. I could wait for the dust to settle from this latest event before getting a better idea of what's going on, but at the same time, it's been more or less this way for what, three years?

My two-sen worth...

Steve

With the emergence of a more "democratic" form of media on the Internet (TIB being an example), there's no need to channel information through dubious press organs whose other principal purpose is to hype weak products in reviews written by "Bob Ronaldson" and other imaginary figures.

If you send them at all, that is. If MD don't communicate with the press, it helps mistakes/lies/rumours spread. It's *not* the other way round.

Hard-copy press releases? Who do you send them to? Is this the 1970s? Acorn issued announcements through the newsgroups and weren't averse to using e-mail and the Web (albeit to a lesser extent) to communicate with customers. I believe that this approach, along with actually delivering pre-announced products, worked rather successfully.

Except for "Phoebe", of course, but you can hardly blame Probe Launchpad for that! ;)