Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!apple!vsi1!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: info on cost of Amiga 3000 and educational discount Message-ID: <1990Oct2.234213.6259@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 2 Oct 90 23:42:13 GMT References: <60277@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <41@atacama.cs.utexas.edu> <1990Oct1.081257.9102@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 51 xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >garnett@cs.utexas.edu (John William Garnett) writes: >> >>From the "Make Up Your Own Mind. Amiga" brochure: >> >>Amiga 3000/25Mhz-100MB HD System: list: $5798, Education: $3899 >> 25 50 4798, 3039 >> 16 50 4098, 2599 > >Maybe poverty just gives me a keener grasp of reality, but look >at the list prices for the 25/50 and 25/100 systems; now take a delta. > >I'd expect to get at least 250, and preferably 300, more megabytes >of disk for $1000 list, since I can just buy the 25/50 system and >go out and buy $1000 worth of second drive and have a much better >system in terms of head contention, etc. That 50 megabytes is >really cheap to add, a couple more heads and platters, you already >have most of the stuff in the disk box, so it should be much less >than 1/6 the price of going out and buying a 300 megabyte drive, >not equal to it. > >I don't (much) mind a bit of profit built in for all concerned, but >pricing policies that are obvious rip-offs just send customers away >angry, and I have an extremely short fuse. Smarten up, Commodore. > >Kent, the man from xanth. > Several folks have written to tell me that the A3000 25/100 differs from the 25/50 unit in having one fewer meg of 256Kx4 RAM and four megs of 1Mx4 RAM. That makes me feel only a little better. First, I'm looking at the list, not the ed. discount prices, where the price delta is $1000. The increased cost of 50 MB _more_ storage on a disk drive is nowhere close to the cost of a _second_ 50 MB drive; you already have case, motor, electronics, actuator arm, etc., paid for, you pay for slightly different electronics, more platters, and more heads on the arm, and, barely possibly, a deeper case, and that's about it. Local retail news ads put the cost of buying the next larger disk drive in a series of same performance drives around $30 per 10 MB. The cost of the added memory seems to be around $112 per megabyte, minus about $60 for the deleted 256Kx4 megabyte, so 5*$30+4*$112-$60=$530 seems to be about the most _retail_ price difference that could be justified. The other $470 looks like pure greed. Kent, the man from xanth. -- Fuel for the fire.