I, for one, see this whole selling 506's with spare amps (noting that there are currently no other alternatives to 506 ownership without separately acquiring your own amps and sending them to Pangolin) as an intended good deed to the PL hobbyist community.
This time it didn't work out and X-Laser admitted the short-comings on what we short-sidely thought were accurate stats. In any case, X-Laser has offered innumerable times to fix this issue for everyone affected in whatever manner they wished (smaller mirrors, full refunds, etc.) I thank Adam, Adam, Dan and the rest of the X-Laser crew for at least attempting to do something for us with what I imagine was a small profit margin originally and probably a loss now.
Why bash one of the few vendors who take the time to do something for the PL community? Taken as a group, I suspect we are frequently pains-in-the-asses compared to the average laser consumer. We dissect every stat and blast anyone who we believe may be overstating their performance. I suspect just posting a product on PL can be risky for a vendor as it may attract attention from "master-blasters" challenging everything from performance to price-point. (I admit I am frequently guilty of at least the later.)
As a group, we do not represent a thousand pound gorilla of organized purchasing power. We are always looking for the best deal and frequently trivialize labor costs as we generally like to do things ourselves even if we value our time at $0/hr. For those vendors (or individuals like DZ and Ed Keefe) who go out of their way to make cool stuff available to us and take all the financial risks as well, I am most grateful.
-David
"Help, help, I'm being repressed!"