Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 15:40:39 -0500 (CDT) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: rgrimes@GndRsh.aac.dev.com (Rodney W. Grimes) Cc: jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com, ulf@lamb.net, dennis@etinc.com, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Question about Cisco 2503i price Message-ID: <199608012040.PAA26468@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <199608011929.MAA01978@GndRsh.aac.dev.com> from "Rodney W. Grimes" at Aug 1, 96 12:29:32 pm
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> > What!? My _nice_ Enlight cases cost $65. I can get tin cans for $35. > > And the power supply in your Enlight cases has an MTBF of approx 5,000 > hours, or about 6 months continous use. The one in the $35.00 tin cans > are about the same. The failure mode is usually the fan bushing goes > out (no one selling power supplies for <$40.00 uses a ball bearing fan.) Actually the supplier apparently buys the PS's separately ... And I haven't had a fan die on a dozen of these in a year. Small sample size, I know. Incidental: I do believe in installing the second fan kits. :-) However, if you have a source for ball bearing fans of the right size, I would gladly be installing them. > You also appear to be buying at very very close to wholesale pricing... Yeaaaaah, so? Any ISP with a quarter of a brain can strike an attractive deal with a PC shop to knock 5% off the current street price (and street price != != != MSRP!! Don't try to tell me that most places try to sell for the MSRP because I'd have to tell you you're wrong). In reality it's easy to find a PC shop that has street prices 10% higher than Merisel or Ingram. > ... > > > Cogent PCI ethermet $80 > > > > Kingston PCI Ethernet $55 > > I show that to be the wholesale price for the KNE40T (TP only), I > can see $56.00 retail if you buy in 20 packs at a time. > > Rod... who's always wondering how these ``end users'' seem to come up > with retail prices below wholesale... :-) :-) :-) Well, Rod... in my opinion, it's because a larger shop can get by on smaller margins. I am guessing that you are a relatively small shop and your customers buy from you at a higher price because they get your fantastic service and wealth of knowledge to back up what you're selling. That has a definite, absolute value. :-) That's why I send folks to you as often as I can. However.. The corner PC shop (that I avoid like the plague) here hires 17 year old kids to put together PC's, and will buy cards at quantity discount and pass the savings on to the customer. They would be buying your KNE40T's in lots of 100 and selling them at $54.00 retail each probably. Of course you get what you pay for: endless grief if you need to RMA something, and incompetence if you let them build your PC. And they have no clue that the KNE40T is based on a DEC21040, whereas you could probably write a device driver for one if you wanted to. Please remember that I am not saying ANYTHING bad about smaller shops who sell for a higher price because I am a firm believer that there is value to be had in it. However, when comparing a FreeBSD to a discounted Cisco, I'm certainly not going to compare premium PC prices to a discounted Cisco price. Got a source for BB fans, PC sized? Thanks, ... JG
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