just because nobody has said much... im going to put my 2 cents in...
point 1: the Classmate IS CRAP!!! the P.O.S.(i hope you know the acronym) takes forever to boot, can't function, and barely counts as a computer! at least the old driver station told you what was wrong, not just a blank screen...
point 2: i dont like the veteran "discount" thing this year. our team uses the majority of the components that come in the K.O.P.(except if we don't use pneumatics), and we like to have functional robots to showcase(like a robot with a cRIO, for example. we are going to be gutting our lunacy bot soon). showcasing gets us funds, and without a robot, it is hard to show a sponsor or the school board(which is FIRST illiterate) what we do. so no robot = no sponsors = no money = no team
so, i do like the opting out or in, and the "i want this in my kit" checklist.
maybe instead of custom kits we could all get the necesities and order the other things a team needs based on what they want. maybe a special promotional code???