On Thursday 29 March 2007 10:22, Hans du Plooy wrote: > On Thu, March 29, 2007 15:43, BRUCE STANLEY wrote: > > From the 'Dell' article: > > > > For cases such as WinModems, for which there are neither open source nor > > proprietary drivers > > available, Dell will be encouraging users to substitute a hardware-based > > modem. "However, we can't > > substitute hardware-based modems in our notebooks without redesigning and > > significantly increasing > > the price of the system. > > What nonsense. Exactly how much does it cost to manufacture a hardware > modem these days? And why can the hardware bits not be on a > daughterboard, like the wireless, bluetooth and other bits are? > > Hans
Well if you are making 1 the about $100,000 US. If you make 2 then about $100,000 US If you make 100 about $100,000 US. You get the picture. There is a quantity point below which the fixed cost of manufacturing so dominate the manufacturing cost that for all practical purposes the fixed cost become the cost of production. If of course you manufacture 1,000,000 then the relevant cost is the variable cost or in other words the cost of the parts, assembly, and testing. No body these days is manufacturing real modems anymore. Everybody is manufacturing winmodems because they are cheaper in total cost of manufacturer even if they are a pile of crap in usage. Nobody cares about that. All anybody wants is CHEAP. so that is what you get CHEAP as in CHEAP quality. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
