Gift speculation & suggestions

[Dave]

Waytools has said there will be some kind of 'extra' or freebie supplied with preordered Textblades and that the earlier the order the more significant the bonus gift.

For amusement I invite further speculation & suggestions on what this might be.

Merchandise - an obvious one, although personally I have not the slightest interest in any amount of caps, t-shirts or coffee mugs.

Personalization - Engraving or other custom identification on Textblade. Would be a nice touch, but most have indicated they wouldn't trade a single day of delay for this.

Spares - Additional Textblade components such as nanostands, nanochargers, alternative keycaps.

Discounts - Voucher for future purchase. If Textblade meets expectations I'd certainly be wanting one or two more units so I'd be pretty happy with something like this.

Priority Shipping - Everyone wants sooner. Mostly affects international orders as for us in Europe the slow option may take 3 weeks and priority costs $45 !

Mod kit - Assuming it's still viable for users to be popping key caps off and messing with the internals. Also presume this would have to be delivered at a later date.

Recognition - Easter egg based acknowledgement of early supporters embedded in the firmware or multimap. Not one I care about but some folks get a kick out of that kind of thing

A baby platypus - May cause problems with both supply and shipping.

[Dave]

For reference

[junk]

I vote for spares and platypus

[thortonbe]

I'm not sure how'd they'd scale platypi based on order date. Or did you mean they'd be tiers like one platypus, two platypi, etc?

[MaggieL]

More reference -- caution: monotremes and strong language

[Dave]

Good point. I suppose the second tier might add an Echidna, that way you have the full set of monotremes.

Any whingers who complain too loudly on the forums would get a male platypus (they're venomous).

[Dave]

Echidna, for reference;

[spaceshipdev]

I really want this project to succeed of course but the whole undisclosed ‘additional gift’ is a tricky one from a marketing perspective. Meeting peoples unset expectations here can go either way.

From a business perspective, I would think having a whole load of pre-butterfly update units lying around, it would make fiscal sense to ship some of the pre-release versions as gifts just for kicks. A kind of “look where we came from”, “see how much better they are”, “feel the difference” so to speak. That would be kind of neat.

Then again, I am a sucker for stickers and tee’s!

[BrettB]

Discount for further textblades makes most sense to me. Seems to hold true to the whole "those who ordered earlier will receive a more substantial gift" thing.

[Dave]

As much as I would like to have an early model I'm sure WayTools would not want them out in the wild. I'm sure the bulk of earlier out-of-spec parts would be destroyed.

You never know where such units may end up or who may be forming an opinion by trying them. They wouldn't risk polluting the world with them.

[Dave]

A substantial discount on an additional Textblade would be useful to me personally, as would maintaining the early adopter conditions such as free MultiMap & futureproofing.

That said, I don't think this is what WT are likely to go for. Its not really a "surprise & delight" kind of thing, much like a gift voucher rarely has the same impact as a thoughtful gift.

It also does nothing for those early supporters who have no need or desire for more than the one unit they've already received.

[adriandday]

My preference would be for discounts and mod kits. If the TextBlade turns out to be as cool as the hype, my family and friends will want them. I'd love to be able to try multiple keyboard mappings with the proper key caps too.

[twoboxen]

I'd be down for extra key caps, stands, or mounts... Things thst make it more useful.

[Jonvaljean]

2 for 1. Nothing less. I am in the early January group. Waiting over 6 months for a product paid for. Not to rehash all the arguments here - in fact I have said in my few posts, get it right, take the time - but once it ships the early orderers should get 2 blades for each ordered. I will probably give the extra as a gift and so way tools seeds the market. Anything less and I will definitely feel used and abused, no matter how great the little critter is.

[charmaex]

At least additional keyblades so you can quickly change layouts.

[Bill]

I'm with you on that.

[Hilgert]

I like the 2-for-1 idea.

[twoboxen]

An idea for something to expand functionality... a micro bluetooth adapter. This way you could pair the TB with your phone, your tablet, your main computer, and this adapter (hot swapping between them). When you want to use the TB on a computer you're working on, or one you're using in a public area, etc, you don't have to worry about whether or not it has bluetooth--nor pairing with an unknown computer.

As a matter of fact, I might start shopping for one now and it will probably only beat the TB here by a few weeks.

[awh_tokyo]

An idea for something to expand functionality... a micro bluetooth adapter.

I'd like something that could pair with the TextBlade and then present to the computer as a standard USB keyboard. My toolbag contains a USB keyboard for working on systems that haven't come up to the OS yet; it would be great to replace that with a TextBlade.

[charmaex]

I like this idea as but it probably takes too much time to build while finishing the textblade so it's probably not the gift.