Cheaper winnies on an NCR tower

[Joe Bob Willie]

In article <105 at cs-col.Columbia.NCR.COM> Sam Vause writes:
>The design of the operating System disk interface code precludes the addition
>of any non-approved disk into the TOWER.  The reason for this is *NOT* to 
>inconvenience you as a customer, but to make sure that only *CERTIFIED* drives
>are installed--the reliability of the machine and its data is the most impor-
>tant issue here.  Drives this size *MUST* have an extremely high reliability
>rating.

Nonsense, the purpose of NCR is to make money.  The typical manufacturers
markup on disk drives and peripherals is near 100 percent.  A certain
nameless manufacturer I worked for sold parallel boards, which cost $25
to manufacture, for $600 because the serial boards, which cost about $100
to manufacture were being sold for $600.  Disk drives were a completely
different issue.  Maxtor drives were priced about 100 percent above cost.
When we started shipping RLL2,7 Adaptek controllers in the machines they
marked up the drive prices at the same time they marked up the formatted
capacity, even after they marked up the cost of the disk controller!!!

>:PS. These drives would have to take a hammering..... 
>
>Don't they all--that's one of the advantages of purchasing one from us--we've
>completed as much stress testing and evaluation as humanly possible.  Such
>testing guarantees that the drives you purchase from us will be as reliable
>as one could hope for.  Period.

NCR is not a drive manufacturer.  To claim to conduct more testing that
Maxtor or Miniscribe or NEC or Fuji is pure marketing hype.  The 286MB
NEC's in our P/95 are no less reliable than the 27?MB Fuji in the P/55.
Both have proved to be highly reliable drives.  Both take quite a pounding
and I don't believe either cost what NCR is selling 140MB drives for.
To be certain, VAT is a big chunk of any machine being sold in Europe,
but the damned exchange rate is more favorable for Europeans than it
has been in the past.  Blaming the high cost of a machine on a more
favorable exchange rate is folly!

I'm not certain how restraint of trade laws work, but this smells like
an area where they might apply.

- John.
-- 
 jfh at rpp386.uucp	(The Beach Bum at The Big "D" Home for Wayward Hackers)
     "Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity"
                -- Hanlon's Razor