The Hidden Costs of Bargain Electronics

Fill Dirt writes "Mike Langberg of Knight-Ridder newspapers wrote an interesting article on the the hidden costs of bargain priced consumer electronics. I saw it in the Seattle Times business section with the title Can't lose with bargain DVD player, but low cost carries price ."

Comments

Ok, I'm stupid.

[SharpFang]

But can I use such a $20-40 DVD player with a PC? Does it have any kind of such output or can I hack it to make it an IDE device?

But wait!

[Infonaut]

That would mean that... *shudder*... there may actually be a difference in hardware quality between a $600 "cut as many corners as possible" computer and a $1,000 computer. By extension, this would lead to the notion that in some cases, the cheapest possible computer hardware is not actually the most cost-effective.

I know we're talking about electronics here, which are a world apart from personal computers, but I just couldn't help but let my imagination run with this one.

Some crazy people might be tempted to bring this wild line of reasoning into discussions about the differences between Wintel and Apple hardware. Gosh, I hope that never happens.

Re:that article

[haunebu]

Not sure about Canada, but the US got where it is today by:

1. Stealing land from others.

This tired old line is complete and utter bullshit. It's not like the settlers sneaked into the Western territories, under cover of night, and swiped the land right out from under the Indians' noses while they were sleeping. Pioneers fought and died for every inch of it. And those scalping Indians were every bit the savage in their attempt to drive the white man out.

That's the law of nature - that's survival of the fittest. And that's how the West was won. That bullshit you just wrote is nothing more than talking shit about the people who fought & died for those sweet fruits you're enjoying.