Making the order didn't provide a whole lot of instant gratification. My Minix NEO X8-H has been shipped from Hong Kong. I have ordered other equipment, such as phone batteries, directly from China in the past. Standard post is generally efficient and I never had anything damaged while in transit over the Pacific. My most recent order states in print that it should arrive between July 30th and August 21st. That's a pretty big window! I surely hope it is closer to the former than the latter.
It was coincidental that on the same day I ordered an Android TV media box, Microsoft announced layoffs of 18,000 employees. I was just thinking that I used to be excited about software created from down the road in Redmond. That surely happens far less frequently nowadays.