No, you're quite right. Pre-orders are inherently risky. A moral company will reimburse the preorder payments (if credit cards were actually charged) if they can't fulfill them (didn't the infamous JooJoo do something like that?) or you can say "bye bye" to your money when the company goes belly up and disappears altogether. It's one thing to have a few engineering samples and/or demo units (Detroit does this at each years Auto Show with their concept cars), but it takes a lot more to get a device actually into mass production and shipping out the door.