I have shared before about my view towards crowd funding projects and have limited my support to just one project so far over the last couple of years but I have another one that is very different to your normal crowd funding campaign.
You have read about Eve before here on SuperSite: Windows when we had a chance to check out their Eve T1 tablet that was running Windows 10 in April 2015. They were one of the first third party tablets running the full operating system ahead of the release of Windows 10 in July 2015.
They are now breaking new ground, which we told you about in February of this year, by asking members of their Eve Community to help design the perfect computing device. This crowd based design process has taken 12 months to reach this point and next month marks the initial opportunity for early adopters to finally purchase the actual hardware.= and that process will be handled through an Indiegogo campaign.
However, unlike some campaigns that are looking to fund the development of the device itself, Eve is using the crowd funding website as a pre-order tool for an initial manufacturing run of 500 units for early adopters.
The reason Eve is able to do all the development without funding from enthusiasts and fans is that they have some pretty serious partners in this project.
First is Intel who has made a six-figure investment towards the project and Microsoft is providing quality assurance and bug hunting support on the new hardware which is already in the testing phase. Eve also has a headphone company, VE Monk, who is helping them with the audio features for the new device.
The details on the pricing for the Eve V, formerly know by its codename of Pyramid Flipper, will be made public when the Indiegogo campaign goes public on 21 November. Of course, we will let you know about that once the campaign site is public and I am told there will not be any sticker shock once everyone hears the final pricing.
I spoke with Eve's CEO, Konstantinos Karatsevidis, via Skype and asked him what has been the most eye opening and challenging aspects of this project:
"To make all of the specs as the community wanted them while maintaining the design. To keep things beautiful we had to reinvent most basic ports so instead of dropping the audio jack we kept it but we had to fully redesign it. Another challenge was we had to keep delaying the project until we were able to get the components onboard that made the community happy."
It sounds like this device combines the best mix between hardware capabilities and design which is always a process of give and take. The big difference with the Eve V project is this was all done in public between Eve and their community of enthusiasts.
Be sure to check out our image gallery of the renders for the Eve V - full hardware images and a product video will be published when the Indiegogo campaign begins on 21 November.
But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.
