[Discuss] Just initiated a new PC buy with Edge

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-10-25 15:46-0700 Rajiv Khaneja wrote:

> Am I the only one that finds $350 for assembly (what amounts to ~ an hour of
> marginally skilled work) a bit excessive?

That is an unfair comparison since the raw component cost I estimated did
not include shipping.  Also, I believe most assembled package deals are
framed as labour cost for assembly plus a certain percentage markup on the
raw parts.  So I think the fairer comparison is with assembled systems that
are offered over the web.  I didn't look at a lot of those comparisons, but
it appeared Edge was charging something like $150 more than those systems if
you completely ignore the shipping costs for the internet systems.  If you
add in shipping costs for the internet systems the comparison gets a lot
closer and seemed satisfactory to me since I am willing to pay a small
premium to deal with a local firm.

Another big factor in putting together a hardware package is the variable
cost of components which might rise or fall significantly from one day to
the next depending on which mix of suppliers you are looking at.  So some
due diligence on comparing local and internet prices should be done for
every hardware package, and Edge might be more or less competitive with
internet prices for the next customer.  I am sure Edge are making a
reasonable profit on the current deal, but I don't begrudge that a bit
because I would like them to survive. I am satisfied from the comparisons I
did that it is not an excessive profit.  That was my principal concern from
some historical dealings I have had with other Victoria suppliers.

I will never forget the time I priced a high-quality CRT monitor (which
dates the story) at atic.ca for something like $350.  This price was
consistent with other internet prices so was not some phantom deal. I then
tried to phone around local suppliers to find out their price on that same
monitor. Some quoted in the $550+ range and some were trying the scam of
offering a $350 price on a crap monitor (which they asserted was essentially
the same as the good one), but none were willing to offer a reasonable
markup (say $50) on the internet price for the good monitor.  Those were the
bad old days, and I hope/believe from my recent experience with Edge that
Victoria computer stores are much more with it now in terms of reasonable
prices.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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