5 ms·
I worked for a company making small electronic devices with LCD screens. There were two models of the device, a cheap one with a smaller screen and an expensive
by AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
I worked for a company making small electronic devices with LCD screens. There were two models of the device, a cheap one with a smaller screen and an expensive one with a bigger screen.
After a careful look it turned out it was cheaper for the company to put a bigger screen in both models, but as a plastic cover on top to make it look small.
It didn't compromise the safety though.
- Scoundreller 8y agoI remember CD burners were like this. You could turn a 2x burner into a 4x with a firmware upgrade. Overclocking brings up similar circumstances: The market may have been 50/50 for the low-speed and the high-speed versions of a chip, but the yield may have been 70, 80 or even 100% for the high-speed, but the manufacturers still wanted to create a low-end and a high-end market.
- stordoff 8y agoOverclocking brings up another example - a lot of AMD CPUs have extra cores that can be unlocked. They're manufactured as the higher-end chips, then just have cores disabled. Sometimes due to defects, but often they work just fine.
- Scoundreller 8y agoI recall some video card where you could change a resistor and fool the card into realizing all of the extra capacity it was built with and had available.
- maccard 8y agoMuch of that is related to binning rather than price gouging - https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/glossary-binning-definition,5892.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/glossary-binning-defini...
- AlexTWithBeard 8y agoTIL: binning
- Scoundreller 8y agoIf that was 100% true, then Intel wouldn’t multiplier lock its chips.
- elygre 8y agoBack in the late 80s, we ordered a $100.000 upgrade for a minicomputer system. The technician literally used a pair of pliers to cut a wire on the board, and the upgrade was complete.
- teknologist 8y agoThe Sennheiser HD 595 headphones from several years ago were exactly the same as the HD 555's except for being $150 more expensive and missing a piece of adhesive backed foam stuck to the inside of the ear cups behind the drivers that were put there to give the cheaper pair a worse frequency response.