On Sun, 31 Jan 1999 17:25:00 -0500, "Charles Loeven" <cpl49@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
jammed all night, and by sunrise was overheard remarking:
> << Take a look at the computer industry - should I
> expect, nay demand, parts for my Commodore 64?
> <<Parts for C64? Yes they are still available :-) You can have mine if you
> want to pick it up.
Well, new parts for the Commodore 64, no way, Commodore went out of
business (I used to work there). But they sold something like 20-25
million of the things, you can always find one used cheap (I see a C64
and C128 on e-bay, $17.50 with 20 minutes left to go).
In practical terms, Commodore did support them with new parts for years
after the last C64 rolled off the production lines. Well, to an extent
-- the last C64s made used the "E" motherboard, only a handful of chips,
cost about $25 to make, including case and keyboard. They had a die bank
of chips, and could package up new ones as demand required. Of course,
in the computer industry, it's simply not necessary to support something
very long. The C128 was introduced in 1985, out of production about five
years later, and practially vanished in another five years. Today, you
buy Model X from a company like Gateway, and in six months, even if the
same model exists, it won't really be the same internally.
And for most of the electronics industry, you don't fix a board that
goes bad, you replace it. Take the C64. I can spend $25 and a minute to
replace the motherboard, and charge you $75 for the repair. Or I can
spend a few hours of technician time, maybe find the problem, and I
still can't reasonably charge more than $75 (at least as much as the
tech time cost me) on a $125-$150 computer. Also, you need a seriously
good tech to figure out what's wrong in such a design, other than
perhaps checking the list of top ten trouble spots. I suspect some OM
repairs, especially on the electronics, were done the same way.
Of course, ten years for an SLR camera isn't all that long -- the camera
industry is mature, things change less rapidly (well, computers have
accelerated it some lately). But no one's really forced to support a
product any longer than they've publically promised in some way. As I
mentioned here before, HP dropped support for my CD-R burner two years
after I bought it, and they're supposed to be a reputable company.
--
Dave Haynie | V.P. Technology, Met@box Infonet, AG | http://www.metabox.de
Be Dev #2024 | NB851 Powered! | Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000, PIOS One
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|