[rollei_list] Re: OT: Consumer Marts

  • From: Don Williams <dwilli10@xxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:45:20 -0600

Replying to Marc and Richard:

Marc

All these people being laid off have my sympathy. OTOH, fire sale prices seem to exist at a number of places. I was at a Fry's store yesterday, the prices of computers has dropped substantially since I was last there a couple of months ago. Its possible to buy a very nice computer complete for around $600 to $800 USD and a quite advanced machine for around $1200. These are not skimped machines but have very large disc drives and plenty of RAM. 1Tb external discs are around $140* and I have heard they are even less at other places. These drives amaze me, the first storage _system_ I ever saw claiming 1 Tb was a "juke-box" digital tape drive made by Ampex maybe a dozen years ago. This was an adaption of their first digital cassette machines and would fill an average bed room. I don't remember what it cost but probably on the order of several hundred thousand bucks.
    Frankly, I would rather pay more and keep Americans working.

I used to be an ACER dealer in California when I had my systems house and they had some pretty good products, but of course so did AT&T and Altos. Someone has been begging for an ACER mother board on the Medical Manager website for months but none have turned up. They would be better off just getting a generic computer of any kind and putting Unix on it.

The last ACER system I worked on was for a client in San Diego, and it had a combo card that included serial and parallel ports, and the SCSI interface on it. Completely not replaceable. He just sent me all his old software and documentation which took up a 3' X 2' X 2' box. I haven't even opened it. He wants support from here but I have resigned him 3 times and that's the last time for me.

We have no Frys here in Oklahoma but I used to go there almost weekly in San Diego. They took over a place called "Incredible Universe" and 10 years later still had that painted on the side of their trucks. They never spend money they don't have to. On the other hand they had good prices, (most of the time) on cameras and computer stuff.

The first week we were back in Oklahoma my wife just had to have a big TV so we got it at Best Buy. It's a nice Samsung Plasma, but we paid about $1,000 more than I could have got it for elsewhere. The screen is already burned in the center even though we set it to not do that. I think a DLP system is best but the salesman convinced my wife that the bulb would burn out in a few years and it would cost $300 to replace it. The fact is that I could get a new bulb for under $100 but that's water under the bridge now. No idea what it will cost to put a new plasma screen on our TV, probably more than a new TV will cost.

I did some contract on-site testing for Lucas at some theaters in San Diego when Technicolor was still teamed with Qualcomm, and the quality of the DLP picture was just great, I even walked up to within 3' of the big screen and couldn't see pixels. It will be DLP for us next time.

The thing I disliked most of all at Best Buy is that the salesman said that we would have a lousy picture if we didn't buy their surge protector and some other junk that I know we don't need or can get for a fraction of the cost elsewhere.

Back to Fry's I have been to their store in Fountain Valley and it was the most complete one I know of. They do have a mail order service, I think Outpost or something like that but I haven't tried it.

One more thing, maybe a repeat. I remember contracting with Miniscribe, years ago, for 1,000 10 MB**hard drives with their rack-and-pinion drive and the price was about $1,200 at that quantity. I ended up taking only 2-3 of them and interfaced them with that terrible Xerox computer which only had floppy drives. I was happy to sell them, one to an organization in NYC called "Foundation for World Peace". No idea what they did but they did pay the bill.

* A few month back I paid about $250 or so for the WD 1TB "My Book". Thought it was a good deal at the time, it supports backup for 3 computers on a wireless router. One just has to accept that technical items will continue to decrease in cost for some time.

**  10 MB was a big deal in those days!

DAW



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