Having been involved in the past with a low-end hardware business, I echo Kent's thoughts. It's a horrible business to be in - slim profits (if that) and lots of tech support.
I have a HobbyCNC board and I'm on the HobbyCNC list. The owner of that business sells the boards unassembled to reduce costs and presumably make a profit. Unfortunately this means their typical customer is a person with no experience assembling boards, yet they end up giving it a go anyway. Hardly a day goes bay without a posting on the list from someone who has screwed up their board somehow while assembling and testing. Not a way to get customer satisfaction. I'm not sure how or why they keep doing it. Andy Kent A. Reed wrote: > Gentle persons: > > I'm hearing echoes of a 30-year old story that a contributing editor of > one of the early microcomputing magazines (maybe Kilobaud) told. He got > a wild hair to make a simple interface card and sell it. His tale of woe > can be boiled down to "I was losing money on every sale." What the > manufacturing costs didn't eat, the shipping and post-sales service > costs got. My hat is off to anyone who can keep at this business of > selling peripheral hardware for any length of time. > > I am interested to see what comes of the notion of an open, generic > (dare I say "standard") protocol for communicating with servo drivers, > but that subject probably deserves its own email list. > > Regards, > Kent > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world > http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > > -- Andy PGP Key ID: 0xDC1B5864 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
