As mentioned in other posts the limited selection is a resource issue. We
could certainly add a dozen or so other printers. Certain products need to
take a priority. For instance USB Wireless Adapters. It's a time consuming
process just communicating with the two dozen plus people and companies that
are involved in getting proper support for the hardware.
1. You have to have a factory to manufacture
2. You have to have a factory to manufacture in the quantities you need
3. They have to understand you can only utilise a particular chipset
4. There has to be the money to pay for a HUGE quantity of the product to
manufacture
5. Huge quantities of a product mean that there has to be some kind of
financing (loans)
6. You have to communicate with chipset vendors because there are no free
software chipsets available... which then means you need someone on the
inside who can move forward on getting a chipset free'd. This is even at
chipset vendors which have traditionally had good to decent support for free
software. Your inside guy has to go up the chain of command. This takes a
LONG LONG LONG time. You end up getting approval from legal, but legal says,
approval is needed from marketing/business, so you have to get
marketing/business on your side, and then finally you have to get some
executive at the top to approve of everything.
7. The company OK'd everything... but they won't release the source code
until it is cleaned up. They don't have the resources to do that. Now you
have to find someone who can clean the code up- so that it can be released
under a free license.
8. Developers in the community have to get involved. The source code/firmware
have to be compiled, submitted, and maintained, etc.
9. Now you need some place to store that huge quantity. eee OK. So now you
have to start looking for more space.
10... I'm sure there are things I'm leaving out. Now just go and do this for
a few products and you see what we are up against.
We don't have a dozens of people working full time for every little thing...
:) Maybe in a year from now there will be more demand which will pay for more
people. Until then things move slowly. The fact we have as many products as
we do is quite amazing. But every product we add contributes to the
improvement and resources. So now you know why things are in the catalog and
not quite perfected... despite the "ease" of which it takes to perfect.
