I've been doing some serious prunning in my garden and the tension adjuster broke on my chainsaw. I did some trawling through some very bad websites until I came across blackanddeckerspares.com. I easily found the part I needed and ordered on line. £0.99 for the part and no delivery charges. As Charlie Boorman would say "How cool is that?"
On the other hand, I ordered a SCSI drive and paid £10 delivery. They shipped the wrong part and I had to pay another £10 for the replacement!
£0.99?! Surely delivery would cost more than that on it's own when taking into account packaging and labour time to actually wrap the thing up etc.
Agreed, presumably it will come in a jiffy bag, so it will be at least 50p to post and the price includes VAT as well. I'd happily have paid £2-3 for delivery as I think that's a fair rate. It's when companies use delivery charges and incoming phone calls to generate profits that I get miffed.
It's IT. You pay £70 for a cisco cable, you look on eBay, you find a china's made cable that costs for £5 for be shipped express and it works exactly the same looks the same. The only difference is the name and the cost!
You put the words Cisco, SCSI, Microsoft, Dell or such and it's a license to print money.
I suppose you could argue tho that the SCSI cable requires a technical person to pick the right one, thus higher costs and DIY stuff is easier. No offence, but can you easily find a 68pin connector in a box full of 80pin?
I am not by any means defending the deplorably prices cables from cisco and the like but there are very real differences in the cables. A lot depends on the purity of the copper and the precision of the method used.Originally Posted by matt40k
If there is enough flaws in the copper or even densities that are to different the wire becomes a huge resistor when dealing with high speed signals as the signal jitter generated by the impurities messes with the signal. You can actually have a cable that will pass a standard conductivity test but is unable to transmit USB frequency signals across the cable. You need one crazy expencive bit of testing gear to see this in action though and a really rubbish cable.
In comparison to SCSI or a cisco interconnect USB frequencies are practically audible and so much better processes an materials must be used to ensure a fully reliable cable for this kind of transmission.
Well i've seen £50 for a Cisco console cable(?), serial to rj45.
I accept the quality of components (gold plated etc), but when it's from the same factory! It's like how Dell (used) make there systems only support Dell brand ram thus locking you in to an expensive future upgrade.
But when certain big name stores charge £20 for a scart cable and you can get a one that works just as well for £2 - that's when it becomes a joke.
I think this is what lazerblazer was getting at.
I know when you need something to do an important job the more you pay, the more you get.
To add to what Matt is saying... When I was looking for a flat screen tv I was told that the cheap ones are just as good as they are all made in the same factory by the same people that make the big name ones.
Hardware made in the same factory does not mean the same standard of kit.
It is common for big name companies to have their hardware complete an additional layer of QA to ensure high standards. The other hardware (or the same production run) might have minimal QA and can be shipped with known faults as the risk is deemed acceptable.
This has been an issue with Sony, Dell, LG, Phillips and IBM to name a few.
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