Re: Getting around the firewire problem was Re: filmscanners:Best film scanner, period!!!

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>]

Laurie, please understand that although my comments where "attached" to
your posting regarding cost of memory, it was not specifically directed
to you.

I certainly agree that most currently used memory has considerably
reduced prices, although rarer forms or obsolete ones have become rather
expensive.  This, of course is a mixture of supply and demand,
manufacturing thresholds, and, of course, industrial manipulation of the
marketplace to move people "forward" to the mainstream newer products.

I have never fully understood why RAM prices fluctuate so drastically,
other than that they obviously cost a mere pittance of the retail costs,
allowing for considerable bloating to occur along the way during "good
times". Someone explained to me that the DIMM manufacturers are so
annoyed with RAMBUS due to, shall we say, "borrowing" patented processes
and then using extortion to sell them back to the original owners, that
the DIMM cartels got together and decided to slash prices to make rambus
memory so noncompetitive that Intel and most everyone else would just
stop designing around it.

Anyway, having lived through a period where all my US friends couldn't
understand how I could be working with such antiquated computers when
they were so dirt cheap in the US, makes me a bit sensitive to pricing
structures outside of the US.  As an aside, our local camera shop has
the Polaroid SS4000 for $2199 CAN right now.  Here in BC we have 14%
taxes on consumer goods, leaving the price at over $2500 CAN.  With
exchange, that comes to over $1600 US.  That's considerably more than
$900 prior to rebate offered in the US right now.  In fact, after
removal of the $200 US rebate on both sides, our price here is just
double that of the US.  Is that silly or what?

Art



LAURIE SOLOMON wrote:
> 
> Art,
> 
> I respectfully agree with you that different locations, due to differing tax
> structures, distribution systems, shipping costs, currency rates, and the
> like, may very well have differing prices on any given item ( and this is
> without even bringing up the fact that most of the world does not have
> access to or use digital equipment and information systems - let alone the
> internet. 

<much removed>