Almost dumped the 4G Junk Flash

Den torsdag den 19. januar 2017 kl. 17.48.28 UTC+1 skrev snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com:

one of these

or just a drive with a trojan horse? ;)

.com:

t missed it, but it's a 4G USB flash drive. I guess flash is cheaper than paper now. The drive costs me several grands, but better than the paper ce rt.

?

Not likely. Not if they want us to support their plan. This is from Oil & Gas company managements and lawyers, who will be making big killing on thi s. They expect full creditor recovery with $50 oil and $2.80 gas. Last i check, both oil and gas are above that.

They are estimating 50c/$ on their oil fields. XOM and NEL disagreed and a re paying close to full prices recently. Managements will make close to $2 B and hopefully leave some for the poor bag holders.

I've been wondering for some time now why companies like motherboard manufacturers don't supply their drivers in USB flash drives instead of on CDs and DVDs.

A 4GB USB2 utility flash drive from a reliable manufacturer like SanDisk now be had for less than US$3 retail. OEMs can probably get them in bulk for less than $1. That may still be higher than the cost of pressing an optical disc but customers will surely appreciate obviating the need for an optical drive, and wouldn't notice a $1 increase in the overall price.

That's a good point. Many laptops don't have optical disks now. But then can't you always download the files from the Internet? When you buy a PC they don't even give you a DVD with the OS anymore to save the $0.50.

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Rick C

I'm sure they cost more to make. Also, a $1 increase in production cost doesn't translate into a $1 retail price increase.

there's why. 10,000 x an extra $ is $10,000.

that happens, if at all, after the customer has paid, at which point the company's only interest is to fulfil the contract at minimum cost.

NT

Downloading hundreds of MBs, let alone some GBs, is not a trivial matter for many people. For example, I'm now using a 1Mb/s ADSL connection. This gives me a 100 KB/s download speed on a good day but often drops to less than 20 KB/s. I also have a 2 Mb/s line but that's capped to 2.5 GB per month. Downloading the most essential drivers totalling, say 500 MB, can take hours. And there are millions and millions of others in the same situation.

Besides, someone without easy access to another computer - again there are millions - won't be able to download anything until they have the drivers. Catch-22.

But that's easily passed on to the customer. Companies regularly spend more than that in non-essential overheads.

I beg to differ. I, for one, will certainly be more inclined to buy a product with drivers on a flash drive than one with an optical disc. Just as I'd choose a product that comes with a driver over one whose drivers have to be downloaded, all other things being equal.

Also lets them ship the hardware before the drivers etc. are stable. Gets rid of a whole layer of logistics to make sure the (more stable) hardware is tied together with decent drivers and software.

You can slap a blank hard drive in a MAC and hook it up to the internet and it will get busy and download and install a fresh copy of the OS. No media to lose, no driver disks, no screwing about. Of course they can only do that because of the limited variations etc.

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Best regards,  
Spehro Pefhany 
Amazon link for AoE 3rd Edition:            http://tinyurl.com/ntrpwu8

What computer doesn't come with everything required to access the Internet? The first thing you are supposed to do is make a recovery disk.

As to your Internet, limited Internet is not what "most" people have, rather a small minority. Most people live in cities where bandwidth is wide and open. Those few in more rural areas may have limited bandwidth, but this is a small minority. Then there are those who choose to not have computers, but rather use cell phones only, but then we aren't really talking about them are we?

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Rick C

You clearly don't understand retail pricing! Nothing is "passed on" to the consumer. A price point is picked which gives the highest revenue, then the costs are minimized to maximize profit.

When do you get a choice? PCs these days come with no disk and other products that provide software only come with a disk. I've never seen a USB drive option. Heck, they invented the mini disk to save another nickle off the cost of providing that!

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Rick C

Define "non-essential overheads". You mean like salaries and taxes? Perhaps marketing?

You're unique.

Computers assembled by the owner or custom ordered from a shop don't come with everything. I don't know what the ratio of those to readymade ones is, but they certainly are not an insignificant minority.

You must be thinking only of the US and comparably developed countries. I live in one of India's state capitals where the highest Internet speed available is 24 Mbps. But that plan is prohibitively expensive for most people and most opt for 4 Mb/s or lower. No fiber yet. In fact, the vast majority subscribe to an uncapped 1 Mb/s line. This in general is the situation all over the country, except perhaps in the few major cities. 1 billion people are not "a small minority".

Heck, I still see posts in forums - not just those based in India

- with warnings for 56k users! Now *those* must surely be in a minority.

Of course not.

If you're building a computer without the necessary tools to do so, you're pretty dumb.

Even 1Mb is enough to download drivers. You aren't talking about downloading the OS?

When? Where?

That would be a small minority. Besides, if you are assembling your own computer, you will have windows on a disk or have disks from the component vendors for drivers. I bet there are 100 assembled computers sold for each one home made or even custom made.

Uh, I am using a connection with 2 to 5 Mbps depending on the state of the network. When I first signed up I would only get 1 to 2 Mbps, but the real problem was lack of response time. My pings would go triple digit or even seconds due to network overload. I still was able to download things, especially overnight. It would make streaming video impossible though.

Yeah, there's not many web sites you can even get a page to load on a dialup link.

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Rick C

Ah, but that's the whole point of my input in this thread. I feel that it would be much better for the customer if those drivers came on a flash drive instead of on optical discs (with a c).

Maybe, maybe not. I already indicated I don't have a clear estimate of the worldwide ratio, but my guess is that it's much lower than 100:1. How else could component retailers continue doing such a thriving business?

In my own city at least, the ratio is more likely to be closer to

1:100. I'm not suggesting that this is typical of the rest of the world, but I didn't pull that figure out of a hat either. We have an unusually close-knit society and it's not difficult to make such an estimate.

And my whole point is that the classes of users listed just above are negligible in the grand scheme. The people buying PCs in really large quantities don't even get a disk! In in these smaller classes, profit is cut to the bone by competition and no one is going to spring for the extra $3 to use USB flash instead of a simple disk.

That's a total non-sequitur. If they make and sell a million boards wholesale to PC makers for $5 profit per board and they can sell 10,000 more retail at $10 profit per board, I don't see the need to sell large quantities in the retail market. That's just gravy.

Now if you are buying the components that have flame decals on the side and cost two or three times as much because they are selling "gaming" components, then yes, they may well use something like a USB stick just because it is trendy. But even then a disk is just so simple and cost effective. Those machines certainly have disk drives.

The market is driven by the masses. Maybe it's different where you are, but it sounds to me like there is no room in the price to allow for a $3 USB stick.

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Rick C

Not in the Windows world.

The "driver" has to include its own installer, uninstaller, hardware detection, and manual in 32 different languages that no one will ever read. You are quickly talking many MB for even the simplest driver. Then some will come with a variety of "utility" programs, perhaps an outdated version of Acrobat Reader, trial-ware anti-virus crap, etc.

I had to get hold of network drivers for one Windows machine - it was over 200 MB to download. And then when trying to run the installer, it turned out to need another 50+ MB of dotnot junk. All this, to get a network card running!

Nvidea video drivers are in the 300-400Mb range these days.

--sp

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Best regards,  
Spehro Pefhany 
Amazon link for AoE 3rd Edition:            http://tinyurl.com/ntrpwu8