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Blind brand loyalty isn't always a good thing, especially over the span of 20+ years where you stop even testing the alternatives. Technology advances FAST. You
by solve 13y ago
Blind brand loyalty isn't always a good thing, especially over the span of 20+ years where you stop even testing the alternatives. Technology advances FAST. You say nothing about having actually evaluated the cheaper alternatives in person? Are you sure that despite exponential increases in technology that prices haven't come down at all?
Are you sure about the true production costs, if you eliminate the 20 layers of middlemen and are only paying the 10cents / hour miners + 20cents / hour workers? This is a finance / markets question, not an engineering question.
Lots of strong emotions, not so sure about the evidence. Technology and cost of technology never stops advancing. Numerous large companies are guilty of price-fixing, e.g. the large-scale monitor price-fixing scandals from a few years ago. Bet you never even heard of those cases?
- sliverstorm 13y agoParts sourcing is part of engineering. He is right, well designed high voltage protection is not going to be cheap, and these meters are obviously not designed with anything but digital testbench in mind.
- mindslight 13y agoHigh voltage doesn't automatically mean expensive. We're talking about low-speed battery-powered equipment whose only I/O is through buttons and an LCD, not something like a USB oscilloscope that needs high-speed galvanic isolation. Getting the details (shrouding, creepage, plastics) right (and keeping them that way) is going to take design time and vigilant QA, but the parts themselves aren't inherently expensive.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- solve 13y agoNo. Parts sourcing is not even close to getting your pals that you know at the factory to slip in a custom assembly run, just paying the absolutely minimal costs and nearly 100% of the money going to the very bottom $1/hour end-workers. There's an assumption that price=quality. That's ok, until we get into the extreme cases. We're talking about the extreme limits of how cheaply this could be done. The prices of the raw materials are not high, they're not made of solid gold or rare-earth materials. Assembly costs almost nothing.
- sliverstorm 13y agoWe're talking about the extreme limits of how cheaply this could be done. When was the last time you trusted your life to something that boldly tested the limits of that edge?
- solve 13y agoEvery day? You think the products you use every day aren't maximized for profit?
- sliverstorm 13y agoTo a company with a presence & reputation in the American market, "profit" consideres reputation and repeat customers. To a fly-by-night foreign company with no name, "profit" begins and ends at the point of sale.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago> To a company with a presence & reputation in the American market, "profit" consideres reputation and repeat customers. Not true. Think about all those telcos, ISPs, car producers, etc. that just sell bad products and services, don't give a damn about their customers and still profit. Unfortunately, business at large figured out how to be malicious to customers without losing money.
- jff 13y agoGo buy some Chinese-brand tires from Walmart. I'm sure they're just cheaper because they cut out the middlemen and aren't selling a name. They certainly won't blow out after 8000 miles.
- solve 13y agoI used to think to you, until I moved across the world to a place where people make $1/hour (where I'm still residing now.) Tons of extremely high-quality products for cheap, that I've never seen in the US. Turns out that assuming Walmart is the end-all to low price goods was completely wrong. Prices are set to maximize profit. Everywhere. Even at Walmart. Especially at Walmart.
- rayiner 13y agoAnalog technology evolves very slowly relative to what you're thinking of.