Sharp has given the release date for the USA as Q1 2004. (They didn\'t ever give a USA release date for the SL-C7XX, so it\'s not a good comparison.) They\'ve given the manual for the SL-6000 to the FCC. They\'ve given actual SL-6000s to IBM employees who showed them (on demand only) at Linuxworld. You can read IBM\'s SL-6000 \"Success Story\" about what they\'ve achieved with the SL-6000 at
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cs...nDocument&Site=You can find the SL-6000 listed at
http://www.dealtime.com already (
http://www.shopping.com) with product ID and other prerelease details.
Given all this info, \"6 months\" is not a very good release estimate. Predicting the future is always risky, but there is ample reason to believe that the product exists in some quantity already and that the manufacturing capability is in place for more.
Sharp missed its Japanese introduction dates for the SL-6000 by about a month and a half, judging by reports on blogs of Japanese users acquiring them about a month and a half after the announced release date.
Anything could happen. Mahwah, NJ could be swallowed by an earthquake. Monkeys could fly out of your butt. Sharp Tech Support USA could return from Spring Break recharged. Who knows? But the best estimate right now based on existing info is that the SL-6000 will be released in the USA WITHIN THE NEXT MONTH.
Sharp Tech Support should know about it. The fact that someone in Tech Support doesn\'t, could mean that they\'re an idiot, or that they\'re told not to say anything, or they\'re frustrated and wanting to quit, or they\'re having a bad day, or they just got back from maternity leave and aren\'t up to speed on new stuff, or they\'re getting so much spam in their mail they accidentally deleted the one message telling about it, or it could mean nothing. But it DEFINITELY don\'t mean that the SL-6000 is just a twinkle in somebody\'s eye for eventual delivery in a future epoch.
