Vaporware

[Sam Or I]

How long are you willing to wait for something that is considered vaporware (but seems it will be released, eventually)?

In this particular case I am still waiting on the RED Scarlet camera. When I get back to the States in July I was planning on purchasing a good video camera. The RED Scarlet is considered vaporware by many, but RED makes it seem like it may be released by the end of the year. (Of course they have been saying something similar for a while.) At least this time they have a working model, and test footage is being shot by it.

Or do I skip it and go with the Panasonic AF100.

So in a more general question, how much ley-way do you tend to give vaporware products?

[Darth Tanner]

None at all. I don’t see why you should wait for a product to be released unless you have no alternative. It’s not like there is a shortage of video cameras on the market. If you have some weird brand loyalty thing going on then wait for whatever you want, if your able to wait after all you might save yourself some money by not buying it altogether or getting something discounted later.

Only exception is if the product in question has some key feature that you desperately need and are willing to wait for.

[Sarevok]

Nuclear fusion is the ultimate in vaporware. It is always within ten-twenty years into the future.

[Sam Or I]

Nuclear fusion is the ultimate in vaporware. It is always within ten-twenty years into the future.

I love the quote!

[Simon_Jester]

For a long time, people in the community would draw up projections on fusion based on large scale funding- as in, really expensive pieces of hardware. Generally, the budget for that kind of thing hasn't been made available, which has set back the 'due date' many times.

Of course, there are a lot of things that could get done quicker if you threw more money at them; fusion power is no exception.

[Serafina]

We HAVE working nuclear fusion generators and can create a net energy gain from them already. The trick is making them economically feasible, cutting down the cost and increasing the gain in order to make the electricity produced comparable in cost to that of coal and fission.

We could do that relatively quickly if we'd just pump more money into it, for example ITERs building time could be cut almost in half by piling on more money, and building more than just one facility of that stage could vastly increase research rates. All the money in the world would not have given us efficient fusion 20 years ago, and it would not do that today, but it might just give it to is in 20 instead of 40 years.
Heck, ITERs current funding is just about 15 billion Euros, there are military development programs that eat more than twice that money (about 60 billion US-Dollar have been spent on the F22 IIRC).

[The Yosemite Bear]

Nuclear fusion is the ultimate in vaporware. It is always within ten-twenty years into the future.

especially since it would run on water