a certain amount of skepticism is perfectly reasonable and expectable.
Agreed, but in this case, some/most of these XE boards are AFAIK/IIRC Beta boards, and sold "as is", weren't they ?
As for my response to KennyR, lots of people say "everybody" on AW is only Pro Amiga and nothing bad can be said about Amiga / Eyetech / Hyperion or you're a blue troll. Clearly, this is not true.
Now pathetically for some, the Amiga situation has become a game of "if MorphOS doesn't survive, it's my mission to make sure that AmigaOS doesn't survive either".
I for one hope that MOS stays afloat. It may not get official (kernel) updates, but who knows. OpenMOS anyone ? :-)