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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (85976)	8/21/2000 10:21:04 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Don't know then. I still think it might be some misplaced technology restriction notion by the Feds. I was in Hong Kong 13 years ago and was looking at camera lenses. I was warned that Nikon and other companies aren't particularly careful about limiting distribution of their lenses and that some of the lenses shipped to HK were using inferior, but adequate acrylic optics, shipped under similar, but different model numbers. When I priced the lens I was looking at, 85-205 f/4, I went to NY pages in the back of an American camera magazine and found that the prices in HK weren't all that different from the U.S. deep discounters. And in the U.S., you could have some consumer protection and a return policy. Well, I put aside my concerns and bought the lens. It worked out okay. I made double sure all the model numbers agreed. The price I ended up paying wasn't any better than NY. Just one data point for you. I've found the same thing in laptops. When pricing laptops it became real obvious that this Model Number hocus-pocus was rampant. It was extremely difficult to come up with price comparisons between models and companies. They varied from obvious, to very subtle ways, and the permutations seemed nearly endless. I would get a spec sheet, down to the components if possible. A $1000 premium seems really odd.