Petz, The screwdriver shops are very economical and can easily hold their own on merit against Dell and Compaq, etc. The unsophisticated buyers respond to marketing cues and buy the name brands. Savvy buyers get all their stuff from screwdriver shops at 25-40% less than Dell, Compaq, Packard Bell etc. I get people every day who want to upgrade their Dells, et al, and I tell them it cannot be done, as the motherboard is proprietary, and the only thing to do is a speed kluge like a premium priced overdrive chip. An entire motherboard and CPU is often cheaper than the overdrive alone, talk about niche marketing to trapped prey.
I suspect that if you took the published CPU sales figures of Intel, AMD, Cyrix, and IBM(do they tell all??) and deducted the brand sales for IBM, Compaq, Dell etc you would be able to get a handle on the screwdriver shops. I bet they are larger than most realize. Ryerson polytech(Toronto) has kicked all Dells, Compaqs out, as they now go with products with a clear upgrade path for 5 years for their systems. Changing CPUs and motherboards to keep them current, and introducing new systems so that nothing is ever more than 1.5 to 2.5 years from being fully current. Sort of what I do with my home system, no motherboard gets to live for more than 6 months or so, and then on I go, retailers do it all the time, you get to be current, and test new stuff for free, as it gets into a client system in due course, and it looks brand new and has full warranty.
Bill |
