>I just spoke to someone at CR Kennedy and was told that since Pentax had >the > K10D at Photokina without the finalised firmware, they expect that their > first shipment is about 6-8 weeks away. Last time I spoke to someone, > they > said early Nov for the first shipment. You'd think Pentax would have the > firmware sorted before announcing it's release and availability date.
They have good reasons, the first and foremost being: Get the camera out before the holiday season! See, in retail that's the real ticket. If you miss the holidays, your product will rot on the shelf during winter, the slowest retail season of the year. Plus, every computer-based item will have bugs that won't be found until a very large number of people (read: end users) start using the item frequently. I can't think of a dSLR that's come out that hasn't had some sort of firmware update within a month or two of its release. Finally, it could be that the camera bodies they had at Photokina were like the one I was fortunate enough to handle last month, and were actually incomplete on the inside. I was told the body I got to play with didn't have a lot of its image processing hardware and software completed, and it's entirely possible this was the same case for the bodies at Photokina. It took photos just fine, but I wasn't allowed to keep any since (I was told) they wouldn't look as good as photos from a final production model. This is, of course, just a guess. My former Pentax rep told me they were shooting for a shipping date before the end of October, and as far as I know they're still on track for that. I hate having to be patient (the dust on my D's sensor keeps coming back), but we don't have much of a choice. John Celio -- http://www.neovenator.com AIM: Neopifex "Hey, I'm an artist. I can do whatever I want and pretend I'm making a statement." -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
