Great post! I would specifically second the "incremental/optional approach to product features" part, myself tho all the rest of Guy's points are totally spot on, IMO. But in my case, this has been reason #1 I've gone to elecraft products instead of the competitors.
For me, the greatest value is you can configure your K3 (or K2) with whatever options you want and not have to pay for options you don't need at the time or don't want. But you still get the highest performing RX on the market and all the functionality in the basic rig. That you couldn't do that always drove me nuts with the Big 3 and even Ten Tec - it wasn't that I wanted this or that feature in a particular rig, but it was what I wish it _didn't_ have so that I didn't have to pay for it. All I wanted was a good basic configuration with good high performance. A CW filter and I'm ok - add an ant. tuner and built-in keyer and I"m really happy. but there was no such option available from any of these manufacturers. Either I could get an inferior basic rig, or I could get a fairly good to very good RX/TX but with loads of other stuff I didn't want - pretty screens, knobs for every function, the size and weight of a Hummer, useless features that looked nice and on and on. I prefer stripped, but good quality radios. The only ones I could find that met that requirement on the entire market were the elecraft products. My K2, for example, has the NB module and the internal ant. tuner only. My K3 is the basic 10W version with only the internal ant. tuner, a 400hz 8 pole filter and the 1ppm TCXO. That's it on both - the K3 may eventually get the KPA3 and maybe another filter or two at some point, but that's probably all I'm going to end up needing for it. So I'd submit this as another strength of Elecraft's approach - they offer the option of fewer options, an escape from the "featurism" of the competition (a phenomenon we're all too familiar with in the software industry as well). This may not appeal to that large of a market segment, but it sure got my business hi hi. 73, LS W5QD -- View this message in context: http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/Whose-radio-People-vote-with-their-pocketbooks-Only-election-day-counts-tp5089772p5089883.html Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
