With every startup comes a business plan, where you project how your sales are going to increase, and how startup capital slowly gets replaced with profit. Every business plan optimistically projects terrific sales and profits in no time, of course. Noone projects failure.

And with every startup, things tend to follow the business plan for the most part, but then there are "deviations."

It seems that enTourage has hit such a deviation. Specifically, the "market" has not recognized widely enough what great devices the EE and PE are. Yet, several people have recently posted that people in their circle never even heard of the eDGe and immediately see its value. enTourage gave their best shot at marketting, but sometimes you aim wrong. Ultimately, sales appear to not have been as wonderful as the market research and business plan projected.

enTourage seems committed, as it should not surprise us old timers, to continued customer service and tech support above all else. A lessor company would simply call it quits, but enTourage clearly isn't ready to abandon us yet. With careful cashflow management, enTourage can survive with the hope that sales ramp up to a level at least to maintain a niche status quo. enTourage likely will never be an Apple, but that doesn't mean they can't thrive at a lower scale.

I've decided to stay optimistic.

We probably won't see any new models for a while, but we'll probably see Ermine reach a final version, although later than usual. With fewer resources, things simply slow down, but they don't necessarily stop altogether. The pace of subsequent bug fixes will likely be much slower and enhancements may reduce to a trickle at best.

NiaTrue asked what we can do to help. Clearly, continued and increasing sales are the answer (unless someone has a couple of million dollars they'd like to generously invest?). What we can do to boost sales in our circles of influence is what is going to help. enTourage no doubt will continue a campaign of promoting the eDGe in trade shows, conferences and campuses.

And of course, enTourage needs our patience and support. Having been in their shoes myself once, I can tell you that morale is tough to maintain in such a situation. But a company with a shred of hope can hang on surprisingly long (again, from my own experience).

So, should you buy an eDGe today? I'd say, yes. The company seems committed to fulfilling their support and warranty commitments by reorganizing their resources, and both models are excellent devices. They're well built, they're lasting well, and with Froyo (Android 2.2), they work better than ever and have a renewed lease on relevancy.

Ultimately, in a couple of years you'll buy something new anyway, but in the meantime, enjoy an eDGe and help support a company that has a great idea and is doing their best in a room filled with much larger competitors.