I am an nvidia fanboy who owns a 5850 right now. Fermi just wasn't ready. You can debate back and forth about Fermi vs the 5000 series as far as heat, performance, power consumption, etc.
This is proof number one that nvidia really missed the target on Fermi. The biggest failure a business is designing something so poorly it puts people out of business. (not that BFG is out of business, but a big part of that business has failed)