I'm pretty happy to have two (or three including KentS) engineers joining the thread as they all have interesting things to say about the design. Maybe I'd feel differently if they were making me feel worse about my decision to pre-order, but whatever, it's good to hear about other bikes and what people make of the various designs rather than the handful of us there were before posting updates and expressing our disappointment that things aren't moving along more quickly. Also, how many other places are people talking about Helix? Is it really that weird that a few new people join the thread?

The Novotny design looks quite interesting, but for me what appeals about Helix is Peter's obsession to solving all his personal issues with the folding bikes of today to achieve the perfect folder (or at least as close as he can get). As RatonLaveur and Revoltingest pointed out, the Novotny bike has bits poking out all over the place and is far less optimised. This perfectionism has almost certainly been the reason for most of the delays, and might even lead to the project failing, but over the last few months I think progress seems to be relatively OK, and since Helix started keeping everyone updated I have been a lot less worried about my cash.