Actually, my X-15 I bought during the sale has a beam that's slightly off. It's not noticeable unless you look directly down the laser, but it is off centre by around 3-4 degrees. I haven't had a chance to measure it for power or time to measure its divergence, but I'm not too concerned about either of those right now.
A beam that exits not-so-concentric is common.
Unless the engineer took a good amount of time to align the beam, it will almost always exit a few degrees from center. Time is money, after all.
I'm picky about it, though, so when building my own lasers I make sure everything is lined up nice and straight.
All the pen lasers I have purchased from vendors have been slightly off center. My higher-dollar lasers have always had good alignment, though.
It is easy to correct, especially with the CNI GLPs.
I don't think that the sale is to get rid of "non-premium" stock, but rather a marketing strategy to steal some attention away from WL, which is one of the major competitors on the market (and probably the most disliked by the others).
NOVA dropped off the radar for a while, and I think that it is a smart move. I'm glad to see them making a come-back, since I have always been happy with purchases from NOVA.
Edit: That is not to say other factors could also contribute. I'm sure that they had a nice pile of lasers sitting around since cheapie-china shops stole the spotlight (and then Wicked with their last stunt). A couple years ago, NOVA was
the company to buy from, along with Opto for the high-power portables.
Nowdays, the market is flooded with the $0.25 garbage circulating through sites like dealextreme and rayfoss Somehow it's passing off as the new "standard" for the hobby. :thinking: