I haven’t posted anything new here in over 5 weeks, because there’s been nothing new to report. Dead silence from Steorn, who have even stopped removing spam comments from their Facebook page. The closest thing to a new development is that Frank Acland of e-catworld.com managed to coax a small continuous trickle of current out of one of the defective Orbo devices sent to him by Steorn. While this result is consistent with Steorn’s claims, the amount of power involved is so low that it could just as well be coming from a 9V battery hidden within the epoxy goop that encloses the device. The page that discussed these developments appears to no longer exist on the e-catworld.com site.
Just when it looked like Steorn might be settling into another years-long period of quiescence, they posted the following in their Facebook page on April 27th:
Folks, we’ll be posting a new video around the middle of next week so please tune in then!
Also on April 27th, in response to an e-mail I sent asking for an update on OCube shipment, they responded:
[T]he guys are still focused on testing the revised configurations but will hopefully have an update on shipping timelines etc soon. Thanks for your continuing patience but we understand your frustration and will of course issue a refund at any stage if you so decide
So, they haven’t given up yet, and it’s just possible we may hear more from them next week.
They are so full of shit at this point that their eyes are brown. Their web site promised a “new video”. Honestly, who the hell cares? I can show them a video of the Death Star destroying Alderaan if they want, but nobody will believe it happened in real life.
People are so gullible it’s unbelievable.
So on 2 December 2015, or 5 months ago, Steorn posted that their their Ophone would be shipped “12 weeks from payment”, after customers paid the outrageous equivalent of AU$725. Obviously we can now see that this claim was never honoured, and I’m left wondering if those gullible punters will ever see their money again. I’m guessing not, and I’m also guessing they’ll never see their putative Ophones either.
As far as I can ascertain, Steorn is simply another lo-tech scam which has already (apparently) received millions of dollars in advance orders; all by presumably nefarious means. They’ve succeeded in this simply because of their finely-tuned early planning; their realistic looking, allegedly functional pre-production models; a very classy web page; a supremely confident line of pseudo-technical but meaningless jargon; and the dream of unlimited free energy expressed by the scientifically-uncritical masses.
Here in Australia, I can buy 10 “conventional”, fully-featured mobile phones for the cost of the proposed Ophone. It costs around 30 cents per twice-weekly mains charge for my current $59 mobile phone, or $30 annually, and even less with a small photovoltaic charger at zero cost. Why would I even consider for a nanosecond replacing it with an inferior Ophone, even assuming it eventually functioned as claimed? It would take me more than TWENTY years to amortise the cost of the Ophone. Assuming I lived that long!