[geeks] Daily Dose of Unix

[Chris Byrne]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: geeks-bounces at sunhelp.org 
> [mailto:geeks-bounces at sunhelp.org] On Behalf Of Kurt Huhn
> 
> 
> > And of course when you do order bigger drives they charge you four
> > times what the drive costs when ordered from the manufacturer.
> > 
> 
> That's because the Suits want new Maybachs to drive around the suburbs
> in....
> 

Exactly. A little extra margin right on the top. 

Honestly I don't think switching the standard drive from 9 gig to 18
gig, or 18 gig to 36 gig is gonna make a hell of a lot of difference in
the overhead of a box that costs as much as an Octane, and it adds to
the value proposition of the machine. 

That being said, I also don't think that someone in the market for an
octance is going to balk about the 18 gig drive because they know they
can just pull it out and stick a bigger one in there for a few hundred
bucks. 

Oh, SGI list price for a 160g drive in an octane is (or was when they
first came out anyway) $3200. That EXACT SAME DRIVE goes foras low as
$900, and retail list is $1200. The SGI list for a 73 gig drive is
$1400, retail for the drive is $200, the 36gig SGI list is $1200, retail
is $120.

Impressive margins there eh.

And yes, I know that no-one actually pays retail for SGI stuff, and that
you can see big discounts. SGI themselves publishes an unofficial
discounted price about 30% lower than the ones I've quoted there. It's
still a hell of a markup. There is absolutely no excuse for having a
%1000 percent markup.

Chris Byrne