Buying a hard drives

[Damien Elmes]

Neil Symons <neil at goldweb.com.au> writes:

> When you buy Locally, you are supporting the local econonmy: Wages,
> Rent, Insurance, Super etc make up why Components cost more in a
> computer store. You also get benifits such as quick replacements
> when things go faulty.

no arguing with the convenience and quick replacement. from an
economic perspective, i've always tended to lean towards the best
"service". it's all going into the australian economy, anyway.

> Practically everything you buy from the fairs are exectly the same
> from the Local Store. The same percentage of components fail however
> when you get things from stores, they usually install them for you
> and test then swap/change them before they hand your system back to
> you.

but by buying from these stores, you're being taxed for their labour.
i prefer to install things myself, and i'd rather not pay someone's
wages if they're not going to be doing me a service (the IT industry
isn't in need of charity, despite the dot.com bust)

> When you purchase systems from a store, most will honor something
> like 5 years FREE labor. This means that when you upgrade or add
> components from the same store, there is no labor charge to do the
> work.

this has to be balanced with the speed the industry moves at. while
i've got a lot of old hardware lying around, being put to good use, if
a drive fails in three years time, you could probably purchase a
second-hand one, to the same spec, for the money you saved by buying
from the fair :-)

> So you save a bit when you go to the fair, but do you want to sit
> and wait 2 to 4 weeks for the person you purchased the component
> from to come back (and if they come back) to hand component back and
> then have to wait the same length for them to appear with your
> replacement component.

i haven't had anything fail so far. i've bought about 512MB of RAM,
hard disks, an duron chip from a really nice guy. 

this argument tends to switch as the price of the components rises,
though. i'm a student, and i look for things with the best "bang for
your buck". i wouldn't want to spend more than about $500 at the fair,
because by then, a warranty is more valuable than any saving you're
going to have.

as jeremy said, even if he were to have a drive fail now, he's already
recouped the money lost in previous savings.

> *Throws a couple of cents in*

maybe we should start a collection :-)

all the best,

-- 
Damien Elmes
resolve at repose.cx