I don't really want to say anything bad about Miniand, I'm a fan of their work and like what they have going, however... Our prices actually compare very well with Miniand once you include shipping. Also the images officially provided by miniand haven't been updated in a while, where as we plan to keep things more up to date.
Things move fast in China, when we started planning this project the cost was based on a bulk order. In the 6 weeks or so since the retail prices have come much closer the wholesale price. This is typical of Chinese goods once they are available long enough.
So the order quantity is not as important now but we still need the bulk to provide enough funds for the software work.
I'm sorry if you find anything misleading. We try to be as accurate as possible without making the page too dry for non-technical folks. For example we list the features of the Allwinner processor as our work will be portable to many devices beyond what we sell. This lead to confusion were people were saying "I wont buy it, it has a resistive touch screen". The devices have capacitive touch screens and the chip has a built in resistive controller, but we are not using it. Our attempt to show the technical merits of the A10 confused many and so we must be careful how in depth we go. I'm happy to accept feedback about points we need to clarify.
I think this most important work will be doing is to setup and maintain repositories of available packages for the A10 and tablet based improvements. Also we also providing device preloaded and maintaining images for people who don't have time, or don't yet have the skills but would like to run GNU/Linux on their device.
I realize you can buy these devices at cut rates directly from China. Since we have to flash and test these in the USA, we have to pay livable wages to our staff. I realize its not great for the bottom line. It allows us to ship with the latest work we have completed without delaying the production run. This will help to avoid running into Chinese new year and a long production delay.