Is Butterfly Labs reputable / Should I preorder the SC Jalepeno? I'm somewhat new to the mining scene but I'm a bit familiar with everything. I see that GPU mining will become much less cost effective over the next year or so, especially around December when the block reward size drops to 25 BTC. 

As an entry level miner, I don't have a decent rig to just use a pool with or anything. I'm stuck with a quad core AMD mobile CPU in an HP laptop with the worst ATI card known to mankind, giving me about 7.5 Mh/s using rpcminer-4way. Based on what I've seen, the claims that Butterfly Labs is making are pretty substantial and if they're true, they could greatly change the playing field. At a price as low as $150 for 3 Gh/s, I would be willing to invest, since I don't have the money right now to build a GPU mining machine. 

I have seen many people preorder the SC Jalepeno model and I'd just like some additional info and background on the company and their products before shelling out $150-$300. And are there any comparable low-cost FPGA or ASIC USB devices with a decent Mh/s/$?
EDIT:

My original answer may have made sense back when the question was asked, but now it is clear that Butterfly Labs cannot be trusted.

As they say, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me". After all the delays and controversies with their FPGA line, they have given their word that with the experience gained they really will be able to deliver their ASIC line on October 2012. 10 months later (and 20-fold difficulty increase later), even the first pre-orderers didn't get their orders in full. This didn't stop them from announcing a new line, with pre-orders and the same empty promises. Which, if they deliver, will be better performing than their first ASIC line, without any compensation to their loyal customers who have waited more than a year.

The fact that their CEO was shown to be a convicted felon doesn't help.