It seems like mass production can pump out product rather fast. In their previous email they state if they start at mid Sep, they can potentially ship some laptop out before Oct; not necessarily all of batch 1 but "as much as possible".

I think most of the delay might be caused by the cutting edge hardware. If you havent noticed, there is not much 7040U laptop (except couple handheld with custom drivers) on the market, so their might be some difficulties over there. Plus the electrical fault at the end of the testing phase also further slowed down their progress.