🚀 go-pugleaf

jfw@proteon.com (John Woods) writes:

>usually found that PC vendors sell SCSI drives for more than Mac vendors
>do.  (I'll admit that I haven't looked very hard in the PC vendor world,
>sticking mostly to the vendors that look like they'll be in business next
>year rather than in prison...  this does, however, cut me off from most of
>the PC vendor world :-)

Oh please, I only look at ones that are members of the BBB.  Leave advocacy
to the advocacy group.

  In fact, I've occasionally seen Mac vendors sell
>SCSI drives for _less_ than PC vendors sell the equivalent IDE drives  --
>though this usually happens only at the end of a drive's manufacturing life,
>where it's possible that the SCSI marketing channel runs low on drives before
>the IDE marketing channel.  (It may also be that the Mac market is more
>dominated by business buyers than the PC market, and thus the vendors expect
>the average market-savviness of the buyers to be higher.)

Know any dealers selling NEW 1.2 GB SCSI drives for $349 (The price I can get
1280MB IDE drives for from REPUTABLE local dealers)?  I might be able to
find some buyers.  WAL-MART had a Western Digital 1080MB IDE HD with box,
mounting kit, and software to get around the 528MB barrier in their Electronics
section for $350 (yes, I did a double-take.)  Also, Computer City is having
a promo sale of 850MB WD IDE drives for $199.  A while back, they were selling
1080MB WD IDE drives for $299.  With box, mounting kit, and software.  More
likely, the SCSI drives were old and/or discontinued.  (or were even used and
sold as new!) 

>However, Mac drive vendors usually have two associated costs that the PC
>drive vendors do not have (which _really_ has to make you wonder about US
>PC vendors!):  Mac drives are usually (not always) sold with mounting
>brackets, and they are _always_ sold with formatting/driver software.
>PC drives don't need formatting software, since they rely on the adapter's
>built-in driver.

Why would these things make us wonder about US PC vendors?
A MOUNTING KIT?  Those are $5 for PC's, and most PC's don't need them.
They're only for putting a 3.5" hard drive in a 5.25" bay.  Otherwise, you
just screw the new drive into place into one of the internal 3.5" bays.
PC users don't rely on the adapter's built-in driver.  Most get by just fine
using FDISK (partitioning) and FORMAT in DOS.  Why should Apple not include
a utility to format ALL hard disks into System 7.5?

-- 
Stephen Carter Morgan
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
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