With rushing around for the show I missed this one, posted to comp.sys.acorn.announce: Roy Heslop of CTA posted reasons for the lateness of the laptop, and about switching to a new case manufacturer.

In developing and producing a RISC OS laptop computer, RiscStation has experienced several setbacks along the way.

Previously we have been in discussions with a case manufacturer whose product became discontinued, a factor which in itself caused a major disruption to our progress and seriously affected our anticipated timescale for the laptop's public release.

Since then, we have entered discussions and agreements with a different case manufacturer who has a new product about to hit the market. We are very fortunate to have become associated with them at a very early stage in the life of their new case design. This means that the newly proposed case for the RiscStation laptop computer should enjoy a long period of availablity allowing us to satisfy the huge demand we are seeing.

However, the manufacturer of the case is not releasing their product to the general public until July and, under a non-disclosure agreement with them, we are not permitted to pre-release details of their product in advance of their own launch.