🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <harrington-1507950851520001@port104.mhv.net>,
Jan L. Harrington <harrington@mhv.net> wrote:

>>  Good heavens, $350 for a new keyboard?  I was able to get a new one  on 
>> a swap-in from the local campus repair shop for about $90.

>>  J.Politte

>If it's any consolation, Apple wanted more than $1000 for a 500 Mb hard
>drive that I was able to buy mail-order for $400. (Exactly the same
>drive...) Who sets their prices? Are they living on the same planet as the
>rest of us?

Unfortuneately, APple (and nearly everyone else) have forgotten some of
the lessens of the mid-80's.

It is simply not possible for a large integrated manufacture like Apple
or IBM to keep up with small, lean, specialized operations when it comes
to things like memory & hard drives.  It takes more time for apple to
get the item into it's pipeline, more handling, a massive inventory,
etc.  THis also creates an inventory worth less than they paid for it.

In the 80's it was found that it was cheaper to order the bare-bones
machine and build it up than to buy it loaded.  THe same applies now,
except that they won't sell the base unit.

There is some logic when it comes to ram--the base minimum memory
generally will cost less to simply solder to the motherboard than for
everyone to buy.  THis logic stops the moment the memory is socketed.

Hard drives, however, are actually worse:  The large manufacture cannot
get the latest, greatest, etc. into inventory as fast as the little
guys.  If you want a 500mb drive in your powerbook, you have to buy a
powerbook with a smaller drive, then discard the little drive.

The removable floopy in the 5xxx's is a step in the right direction, but
only a step:  they should sell the units with *no* drives:  fill the
floppy bay & hard drive bay yourself.  I'll take a zip, & a
monsterdrive.

IN terms of pricing, look at p 11 of this months (august) byte (i didn't
even know i still had a subscription . . . haven't seen one for months).
The winbook portable is reasonably customizable--trackball, pointer, or
touchpad; active or passive matrix; $400 docking station includes 4x
drive, extensions of all the ports (serial, parallels, ps2 (???), vga,
mouse, keyboard), holds up to two drives (including cd) with two slots
(one used by cd).

$1999 for base unit 4/340 with 100 mhz 486dx4.

I"d like to see scsi & 4 bays in the docking unit (cd, floppy, big hd, &
backup), but this is a good start.
-- 
R E HAWKINS
rhawkins@iastate.edu