On May 1, 3:13 pm, kony
spam.com> wrote:> On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:33:51 -0700 (PDT), Prisoner at War
>
>
>
>
yahoo.com> wrote:>>On Apr 29, 7:03 pm, Arno Wagner
privacy.net> wrote:>
>>> Any specific reason?
>
>>> Arno
>
>>Ah, just 'cause I have one already and want another external HDD to
>>match it!
>
>>But the wider question is, just where do unsold hardware go??
>
>>I mean, it's unlikely that every single piece ever manufactured was
>>sold, right?
>
> What ends up happening is products that don't sell fast
> aren't stocked anymore, so the few remaining sell eventually
> just slower.
>
>
>
>>If not sold, just what happens to them?
>
> A certain number will sit to cover warranty replacement
> situations, then when that period is over they'd get sold in
> mass. It's possible they would sell them with the
> stipulation that the case had to be destroyed, only the
> drive inside sold as OEM.
>
>
>
>>Do companies bury them the way Atari buried all those unsold E.T. game
>>cartridges? (And what the heck is the sense in spending money to
>>destroy product?? Why not give them away, even if only for the free
>>publicity???)
>
> Give them away? That's a bit unrealistic isn't it?
I dunno...seems like it would generate publicity, a kind of
advertising in itself, not to mention consumer good-will (assuming the
product isn't a POS)...certainly better than spending more money
destroying it...
> As
> someone else already wrote it could potentially devalue
> other products.
True -- I was just thinking that no matter what, it's going to cost
some money, so why not give it away for the positive publicity? I
mean, Atari spent millions, I read, to bury those E.T. carts! Heck,
for that, they should have just given it away. General Mills cereal
was giving away one-episode DVDs a year or two ago inside its cereal
boxes of classic TV shows...certainly made me much more likely to
purchase the whole season set (I still think "Barney Miller" is corny
but I could appreciate a bit more such that I would have bought a few
seasons)....
> If you give away everything then you
> certainly keep some people from buying instead. I'd imagine
> they assume most people would rather have the newer product,
> and since drive capacities went up over time the newer
> product should have more capacity per $ too.
Well, I suppose brighter minds than mine has pondered and thoroughly
resolved this matter already, yes....
> Maybe the better question is why you assume they would have
> kept making them if they didn't have any expectation that
> they'd sell them.
Well, I just didn't figure on them not making it anymore -- I mean, I
expected bigger capacities, but they totally changed the outside
shell, and I don't know if the current ones would stack with what I've
got, much less look right with it!
> There might be some seller out there with
> a few sitting on a shelf somewhere, perhaps at a store or PC
> shop but you already see the problem with that- They have
> stock because nobody can easily locate them as someone
> selling the product. If you can get the UPC number off the
> box, you might be able to call some computer shops or
> general department superstores in larger metropolitan areas
> and have them enter that UPC # into their system to see if
> they can find stock there, or at other same name stores
> linked into same database.
LOL, true story: just last week a local computer shop opened up, and I
saw in its window a sound card I'd been looking for to no avail for
about a month! The exact same thing!
> Then again, you could just buy two of the newer version,
> then you'd have a matching pair. Another alternative is of
> course to buy two empty enclosures, pull the drive out of
> the maxtor and buy another bare drive to populate both of
> them.
True; I just thought that I'd save all my effort locating the original
version, instead of playing "mad scientist!" Oh well, this will be
the excuse to buy a new desktop...I've long had Dell's water-cooled
gaming rig in mind, but was waiting on Windows Vista...but it looks
like that's a dog of an OS!
BTW, I've got an old Pentium II machine running Win2000 or
something...I don't know 'cause I got it from someone who got it from
her job...like, what am I supposed to do with it, eBay it for $50?? I
took it 'cause it's a computer, after all, and she would have dumped
it in the trash and I'm such a pack-rat, even when it comes to other
people's stuff...I doubt even the local Salvation Army would want it
(did you know many a library do not want donations of used books?
It's true! Those library book sales they hold...they can't get rid of
old books as it is, never mind take on more!).
