The *beta" software (status communicated to me before I said ship now vs wait until it was finished) does 95% of what I expect and believe I bought.
Your analogy should be “if the lens remover was to be shipped later”. Without the print head I couldn’t do anything. As so many have proven here, we can do wonderful things. So it’s not like making us wait for the print head. It’s making us wait for the final 5% that was sold and another 20% that people think should be in the software.
To be clear, you’re saying the beta software does 95% of what they said it could do at the time of shipment, not 95% of what they originally claimed, right? (Gotta jump in and channel @palmercr while he’s on vacation!)
edit: on “holiday” as they say
edit 2: after re-reading your response, I suppose that could be taken as it does 95% of what you want to be able to do with the machine. Of course, for some others, that percentage might be precipitously lower.
I forgot, the parsers are hovering.
The percentage is going to be dependent on your definition of delivered. For instance although some features are binary (“will support direct DXF” which has not been delivered in any form), others are on a continuum. 3D engrave is only activated for PG acrylic although by copying the settings it can be enabled for any material. Is that a “delivered” or a fail?
Others features are like support for long materials in the pass through. Works with sub-millimeter accuracy but requires user attention to setup & execution. The automagic handling isn’t there.
Support for full 1/2" cuts does not require flipping for some materials and for others it won’t ever work even with flipping the material.
Automagic recognition of iPads isn’t there but you can certainly engrave (mark) an iPad without any “workarounds”. Just place, align, set and print.
So use whatever denominator and numerator you want and feel free to come up with any percentage that floats your boat.
For some people it does not & will not ever meet more than zero of their needs/wants - those are the folks who are looking for physical limit switches. Or who are unimpressed by an additional .4" of material length support because the .5" of height loss forever puts the whole thing in the fail mode.
For others who want/need 1/1000" precision for all of their work, it’s pretty much zero for them too but may be delivered in future software releases.
For most people it does everything needed for almost every task. That’s to say it cuts and engraves and allows for visual alignment with reasonable precision.
Even for me (& I have 2 other lasers to supplement if needed) it does everything I need it to do and easier than either of the other lasers except very thick pass-thru materials & tall objects (the Redsail has 9" of Z-axis travel with full drop down doors for the pass through). I’ve only needed the Redsail once since I got the PRU and I would have been able to do it on a GF Pro.
So pick whatever measure of accomplishment or non-accomplishment that justifies your feelings about GF. Bottom line though, most people will be able to do everything they need with the beta software. If they can’t then they should wait to take delivery when it’s done because it does everything they say it does in your acceptance decisioning email.
I also expect that most people will also have something they want it to do or they think it “should” do because every other laser does it (which is not correct - get a K40 to see the low end and then find a $5000 laser to see what’s the norm at this price point - “all lasers” don’t do what most pundits say they do). Those are features which were not promised but that wont stop people from declaring the gap between their wants & perceptions as a GF failure.
At the end of the day, if you’re inclined you can find ample justification for believing GF has failed miserably. And if you’re otherwise inclined you can make wonderful things the day it shows up at your door.
Yes, the GF does amazing things for such a compact footprint. A true work of art.
However, there are those who were drawn in by a promise of eye-popping abilities that have yet to be realized. I’m just supporting their expectations.
Hi Rotors, That might be the case for USA orders, but for us foreign customers there seem to be other issues. I ordered in the first days, but my delivery date is pushed back by a month as well. I don’t think that this has to do with production, but Glowforge isn’t open what the problem with delivery to Europe is. (unless the problem is; ‘America first’)
James that is one of the better lists I have seen of the things that perhaps should already be there.
At the end of the day, I just want the simplicity. I also want to understand how it all works, and what doesn’t work. We set a vector cut with a speed of 100, and full power. We could tell something wasn’t right, because the cut time went from 1:58min to 43:15min by changing the speed from 200 to 100.
We let the cut go, and the head was moving so slow that the material caught fire and burned some of the thin connections (not a raging fire, but burned) on the piece. Is the 10X speed reduction a feature or an issue? I have yet to see an explanation as to what the speed of the head is…its it mm/second or something else? An up-to-date manual would answer these questions.
I don’t believe that it is unreasonable to have the product supported on the hardware, software, and documentation. It’s the three legged stool analogy. Right now it feels like a pirate…“Arrr, me be one legg-ed.”
Thanks @dan. My GF was set to shop (Dec 13), got email about confirming details, confirmed within 30 mins of receipt. Then nothing… a few days go by and got an email with shipping details for “materials” (not the GF) so it can arrive before the GF. Support says it can be up to six weeks before I receive the GF unit (that the ship date is not really the ship date) as I do not have a shipment tracking number.
Is that right? I ordered a Form2 last week on Dec 11, received a shipping notice within a few hours (shipping tracking) and it arrived on Dec 13. This got me so excited that within a few days we would have the GF too but now I am unsure again when to expect the unit (delivery to Virginia in the US).
The Dec 13th date is when GF puts you on the list to receive a unit in the latest batch. Some look at it as it being the date they start the process of building and then shipping your unit. It’s all semantics, and the irritation over using the word shipping has been beaten to death. Not going to change anything.
Either way, it could take up to 6 weeks to be delivered from the date of your acceptance. Usually less. I’ve seen 10 days and have seen 6 weeks. About 5 days of that will be UPS to Virginia. Average time means absolutely nothing, so don’t stress over trying to figure it out.
That is funny after a couple years I thought that was already implied (@dan, maybe tweak the word Shipping to Production Queue or sim as it is not really shipping at this stage)
Appreciate the sympathy @rpegg and after waiting a couple years, what is another month and a half. Anxious to have a whole bunch of people using this along with our other lasers. 
I’m curious…how long after your shipping notification from Glowforge did it actually ship? I’ve been trying to temper my son’s enthusiasm (he checks the predicted shipping notification date daily) by reminding him that that just means it’s the start of the 6-week window.
Katie,
I live in California. My order (basic) was placed on Oct 21, which was day 28.
I received my “Would you like your Glowforge now” email on 12/4. I responded right away.
8 days later the package left the facility, and arrived the following day.
Cool! We live in California, too. We ordered on day 30, and our date currently says January 11, so maybe there’s hope that we’ll get it in January!
For me it was about a week. And then a week of shipping time. So ~2 weeks from e-mail to my door. But that was months ago. Shipping logistics have probably changed since then. 
I believe mine took 22 days from when I replied to the “are you ready for your Glowforge?” email until I had my Pro in my hands.
I only got the UPS tracking number from GF the day before my GF arrived. Just as many others have reported, I received notification from UPS My Choice before I got any tracking info from Glowforge.
Mine was 4 weeks and have seen 6 weeks out of at least one person in the past few days. The problem with trying to figure out a likely time frame is that it means folks keep contacting support when their shipping time exceeds the averages. All that does is increase the response time for others.
Shy of 4 weeks - 11/27 to 12/22. East coast.
Happy holiday! Cant wait. Until now i still have not received my delivery date in my account page for my preorder. Hope someone can fix this soon.
Have you received your email asking for your address? Are you a USA order, or international? When did you preorder?
Today is my estimated shipping date, yet I have heard nothing from GF directly… no shipping notice. The date was pushed back twice, but this one seems to be sticking. Any thoughts why the date has arrived, but the shipping announcement has not?
On a side note, I hate the word estimated. 
They tend to be sent out later in the day.
