I love crowd funding, and this seems like a great project. But please, before you pledge money, remember one thing:
This is not a pre-order: nothing guarantees that you will ever get anything for the money you've put in.
By pledging money, you become an underprivileged investor. Sometimes, you'll get your money's worth. Sometimes, you'll loose that money. If that's OK by you, then great. If you want a stronger guarantee of getting what you pay for, then this is not the platform to use.
I think they're referring to the case where the funding succeeds. As a non-proud Esquiso owner (who doesn't regret the gamble), I can testify that hardware is hard.
That said, my money's on these guys to pull it off. My only concern is quality control and support/maintenance.
Off the cuff though, I'd say the ideal backer is someone excited about open platforms that push the boundary of what we think of computing today.
Arjan and team[1] proved that a 5-second boot on a laptop is a qualitatively different device. When your laptop boots in 5 seconds, you use it differently than one that boots in 10s or 30s. It becomes more device-ish and less computer-ish.
Analogously, I'd say that a single device that has a touch interface for mobility and a keyboard/mouse for desktop productivity is a new category of computing, and user software will need to adapt to the new possibilities opened up by the innovation we're doing in the foundational plumbing layers.
Looking at computing around us today, my observation is that we're asymptotically trying to achieve this vision by nibbling away at the branches, but not attacking the root.
exhibit a) iPad + bluetooth keyboard. lighter and more portable than a laptop but no one uses it as a phone so you still need 2 devices.
exhibit b) Samsung Galaxy Note, the phablet category. I've seen lots of people with these in Korea, but not so much in the States. Actually, walking around the Mission in SF, I've seen more Google Glass than people using Notes. Not sure what to make of that anecdata, but I think phablets are just too large. I use Strava on my phone when I run; I sure wouldn't want to strap on a Note.
exhibit c) Dropbox, one view of your files everywhere. This sidesteps the device problem, but the paradigm is still 'sync'. I'd prefer to just 'have' (and use the cloud for 'backup' or 'extend'). Plus, editing office docs or writing code on today's mobile devices is still going to be painful.
exhibit d) dumb/feature phones; OLPC. The bottom several billion people in the world don't have access to traditional computers[2], but they do have feature phones today. It's not unimaginable to think that they could just skip laptops and go straight to smartphones. It would be nice if these smartphones were enabled to provide a "productivity personality". Teaching a new generation of programmers will be a lot easier if they had keyboards and mice.
Maybe there will never be a one-size-fits-everyone-all-of-the-time device, but to me, the industry trends are pretty clear and one-size-fits-a-hell-of-a-lot is pretty darn good.
If those ideas excite you, then you are the ideal backer for Ubuntu Edge.
2: pre-emptively agree that the 'bottom billion' don't have easy access to enough calories or clean water either, but I don't subscribe to solving those problems in serial
This is not a pre-order: nothing guarantees that you will ever get anything for the money you've put in.
By pledging money, you become an underprivileged investor. Sometimes, you'll get your money's worth. Sometimes, you'll loose that money. If that's OK by you, then great. If you want a stronger guarantee of getting what you pay for, then this is not the platform to use.