Intel follows the margin

Robert Myers wrote:
chrisv wrote:
"Yousuf Khan" wrote:


"Why did you pay so much for a Toyota?"

Yes, that's a good quote.


But inappropriate and unnecessarily insulting. In the US, several
cars made by Toyota are only available under the Lexus nameplate.


There is no need for anyone to feel insulted. The point is that
people will pay for a brand name and will pay a premium for the right
premium brand name, not that people who pay a premium for a premium
brand name are suckers.

You could also sort of take it to a funny extreme:

So who here has bought a Toyota Camry? Why did you pay so much for a
Corolla?

So who here has bought a Toyota Corolla? Why did you pay so much for an
Echo?

Etc.

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:
Robert Myers wrote:

Yousuf Khan wrote:

Remember I just got back from Bangladesh, where I had to do
everything with dialup and Google Groups. I qualify for having
survived "roughing it". :-)


That was the hardest part of your journey? Glad you're back safely.


What you expected me to be robbed at gunpoint or something along the way?
:-)


Who knows. On the one hand, you see on the news cities in India going
through the same transformation that cities in New England have gone
through (mills to malls), only on an accelerated schedule, and
apparently with no greater pain--possibly even with less.

At the same time, it seems as if in some places in and around the Indian
subcontinent people with guns and other things are playing a bigger role
in life than would be implied by a transformation to a global service
economy. Very confusing. If the worst that life in Bangladesh entails
is no broadband, then maybe things are better than I might have thought.
:-).

RM

"Robert Myers" wrote in message
news:smpoc.77211$Ik.5593676@attbi_s53...
chrisv wrote:
"Yousuf Khan" wrote:


"Why did you pay so much for a Toyota?"

Yes, that's a good quote.


But inappropriate and unnecessarily insulting. In the US, several
cars made by Toyota are only available under the Lexus nameplate.


There is no need for anyone to feel insulted. The point is that people
will pay for a brand name and will pay a premium for the right premium
brand name, not that people who pay a premium for a premium brand name
are suckers.

I think it's socially irresponsible and greedy for giant companies to not
offer commodity
products at commodity prices. Ditto for proprietary games played in the name
of profit
in place of standardization. It's like: "we CAN build technology for a
perfectly
adequate PC for the masses that would cost less than $100, but we WON'T
cuz we can continue to milk consumers for money with this system". Doing the
right
thing vs. doing the most profitable thing does not result in goods and
services that
optimally fulfill consumer wants and needs.

Tony

Robert Myers wrote:
At the same time, it seems as if in some places in and around the
Indian subcontinent people with guns and other things are playing a
bigger role in life than would be implied by a transformation to a
global service economy. Very confusing. If the worst that life in
Bangladesh entails is no broadband, then maybe things are better than
I might have thought. :-).

Actually, the broadband simply wasn't available in my relative's house at
the time I was there. They just got it last week, though. I missed it by a
few weeks.

Actually, broadband over there doesn't mean cable or DSL. Over there it
means somebody in the neighbourhood with a VSAT connection strings up
Ethernet to your house. :-)

Yousuf Khan

On Wed, 12 May 2004 17:17:13 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
wrote:
That was the hardest part of your journey? Glad you're back safely.

What you expected me to be robbed at gunpoint or something along the way?
:-)

Ah, wrong expectations. Didn't u tell him that knives, parangs and
choppers are more the in thing in our region? :PpPp

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

Yousuf Khan wrote:


Actually, broadband over there doesn't mean cable or DSL. Over there it
means somebody in the neighbourhood with a VSAT connection strings up
Ethernet to your house. :-)


There you go! The last mile problem is solved.

RM

Robert Myers wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote:
Actually, broadband over there doesn't mean cable or DSL. Over there
it means somebody in the neighbourhood with a VSAT connection
strings up Ethernet to your house. :-)


There you go! The last mile problem is solved.

You should see some neighbourhoods, they got cable tv, telephone, and
ethernet all strung up on the phone poles from house to house. Then
sometimes a tall truck goes by and sometimes maybe snaps a cable or two. :-)

Yousuf Khan

On Wed, 12 May 2004 12:54:35 -0700, (Nate Edel)
wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Yousuf Khan wrote:
You could also sort of take it to a funny extreme:
So who here has bought a Toyota Camry? Why did you pay so much for a
Corolla?

Except, of course, that there are actual differences in the underlying car's
dimensions. Unlike, notably, the older ES300 models which were pretty much
exactly structurally and mechanically the same as the Camry V6 (although the
interior trim was nicer, and IIRC, they were supposed to have more sound
insulation.)

I don't know the specifics of that situation, but it sounds like the
Honda Civic vs. Acura EL series. Same engine, same chassis, same
transmission... So why do people pay more for the Acura?

Well, the brand name may be part of it, but when you get right down to
it, if you configure out a Civic with the same features (some of which
are only available as after-market parts) as that Acura 1.7EL you end
up with the same price point. I suspect that the situation was pretty
similar with the Lexus ES300 vs. the Camry V6. Once you start adding
in all the options, you aren't really paying much premium at all for
the Lexus name.


There are probably MUCH better examples that you could find that this.
The best are probably in the clothing industry, where you can pay $50
for a shirt because it has a particular designer label, and yet a
shirt that is otherwise identical and made in the same exact factory
but missing the designer label might only cost $15.

Yup, people will definitely pay for a designer label, but sometimes
you really do end up with what you pay for. With computers the extra
money you pay for a brand name usually isn't very significant,
especially if you add in the fuzzy costs associated with things like
technical support.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

On Wed, 12 May 2004 19:39:00 GMT, "tony"
wrote:
I think it's socially irresponsible and greedy for giant companies to not
offer commodity
products at commodity prices. Ditto for proprietary games played in the name
of profit
in place of standardization. It's like: "we CAN build technology for a
perfectly
adequate PC for the masses that would cost less than $100, but we WON'T
cuz we can continue to milk consumers for money with this system". Doing the
right
thing vs. doing the most profitable thing does not result in goods and
services that
optimally fulfill consumer wants and needs.

The capitalist model of society tends to demonstrate that doing the
most profitable thing often DOES result in the goods and services that
optimally fulfill the consumer wants and needs, at least in the long
run.

Sure, it might seem like a good idea to make a $100 PC for the masses,
but then there would be no incentive to push technology forward. The
$100 PC of yesterday would be no faster today. So while we've paid
more for PCs over the years, we've gotten more as a result. If
companies had been producing nothing but $100 PCs for the past 15
years, we would have MUCH slower machines that what you could get for
$100 (used) today.

While a lot of people in this newsgroup (*cough* Keith *ahem*) have
accused me of being some kind of pinko-commie, I'll be the first to
say that capitalism, despite it's faults, has shown itself to be a
reasonably successful economic model. Much more so than the
alternatives at least!

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

(Nate Edel) wrote:

Except, of course, that there are actual differences in the underlying car's
dimensions. Unlike, notably, the older ES300 models which were pretty much
exactly structurally and mechanically the same as the Camry V6 (although the
interior trim was nicer, and IIRC, they were supposed to have more sound
insulation.)

I recall going with my brother (and the salesman) on a test drive of
the first-gen ES300, and I said the "C word" (Camry), which did not
please the sales drone one bit. He defended the Lexus by claiming
that it shared only TWO components (chassis and powertrain) with the
Camry, while it had THOUSANDS of unique components.

Just "slightly" ludicrous, of course, to count the entire chassis and
powertrain as two components, yet still find "thousands" of other
components on the car...