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How Much Are You Paying For A Nameplate?
Matey-O writes: "I realize most of you built your systems youself (with mad overclocking style) but if you've purchased a fully built system receintly from Compaq, Dell, HP or Apple, you may have a computer built by Quanta, a very quiet, very successful Taiwanese manufacturing company. NY times article here." (This is true at least of notebooks.)
With a major brand name, you're paying for marketing and advertising, as well as the product. If a brand name is good enough to gain a reputation by word-of-mouth alone, it's likely to be true, as negative criticism spreads twice as fat as positive.
Now, if they only made desktops...
If I weren't nailed to the penis, I'd be pushing up the daisies!
When Dell first started using Quanta (they also used Compal MoBo's) in laptops in 1998, they got to specify the quality and construction of the product. You might find the same boards in a Time PC or a Tiny PC, but I guarantee that the Dell's will have a better mean time between failures (MBF).
This had some interesting side-effects. It also meant that some strange side-effects occurred. For instance in mid-1999, you had HP and Dell machines with interchangeable components as they were both based on Quanta decks. This actiually proved useful.
So and OEM behind laptops? Bring 'em on! All we need is for them to sell components to the public and self-built laptops aren't that far away.
While the first statement seems very sound and realistic the last seams a little short-sighted.
The "killer app" to convert desktop users to notebook users after the plateau is not software. It is the "Internet anyware", wireless, portable, comunications terminal that is a laptop. PDA's are convenient and do their job, ie. quick basic computing on the go. People want portability and that is the notebooks "killer app".
The implications for the US are interesting. The removal of manufascturing jobs from the US means there are less decent paying jobs in the US, tightening the Job Market.
You've got it backwards. Manufacturing is a commodity industry, assembly line workers are paid hourly and count as semi-skilled at best. The real jobs - rewarding for an individual and value-adding for a company and a nation - are in designing the goods to be manufactured in the first place, and selling them along with services and support.
If anything, the quicker countries like the UK and US can wind down manufacturing of commodity items, the better for their economies it will be.
This is part of a much bigger picture, which includes the HB-1 visas, etc. All of which does not bode well for American technology workers in the long term.
Manufacturing, even of high-tech goods, is not what technology workers do. There is no way an American assembly plant can compete with an offshore one, where the cost of doing business is always going to be lower (in US dollar terms). But it's difficult for an offshore company to compete with the US in value-adding services (such as what Dell offers) because Dell understand the "hearts and minds" of the consumer. All the manufacturing savvy in the world doesn't amount to a hill of beans unless you know what to manufacture.
You've got it backwards. Manufacturing is a commodity industry, assembly line workers are paid hourly and
count as semi-skilled at best. The real jobs - rewarding for an individual and value-adding for a company and
a nation - are in designing the goods to be manufactured in the first place, and selling them along with
services and support.
Stop for a moment and think about the people in the US who are hourly semi-skilled people on manufacturing lines who lack the desire, ability, or education to become "designers" or other more "skilled" jobs. Tell them that it doesn't matter when they go on the unemployment line, and onto welfare, when their jobs get moved to a manufacturing facility in Mexico.
Honda built a manufacturing plant in Marysville, OH. Probably because it was the most cost-efficient thing to do over having the job done in Japan, Mexico, or Korea. Dell built a plant outside Nashville, TN. Same reason as Honda.
The simple fact is, jobs matter. Whether they are unskilled, semi-skilled, or highly skilled. Don't discount even the "lowest" of jobs, because that job probably means a lot to the people who work it.
Funnily enough, the last time I checked with my IS guys, I could put together two complete no-brand systems for what they pay for a full Dell system + support.
You forgot about the killer hidden cost: labor. I don't disagree that it'd be much cheaper in materials for us all to build our own boxen (but not laptops, mind you). Factor in just $60/hr for salary, benefits, and support costs for an in-house box-builder. I can build a standardized box in less than an hour, but then there's the OS install, service packs, and device drivers - there goes another two hours. Toss in the app installations, and there goes half a day, and more than $300 in labor - and we haven't even discussed burn-in testing.
Or, I can just pick up the phone and get my customized install done by Dell, drop-installed to anybody's office. Zero labor costs.
What's your damage, Heather?