#3000 RAM
4 messages in this thread
Steven:
I remember several year back that chip manufacturers in this country jumped up
and down saying that Japan was dumping chips at under cost. The government
forced Japan to quota the production to the US so as to give the US a chance to
catch up and cut their production costs. At about the same time a very large
electronics ceramics factory burned in Japan which made it easy for Japan to go
along with the chip quota. It appears that the price of memory chips has stayed
the same for almost four years and are probably held there by some government
agreement and not by the market place. Also it seems there is little cost
saving by buy big chip over one meg chip. This seems artificial and not being
controlled by a free market. It is funny how the big companies all want a free
market place until the competition gets to hot.
Regards,
Norm
Norm,
I know that US pressures on Japan to change their trade practices has
been substantial, and that several minor agreements were made earlier this
year, but I don't recall any mention of electronic parts being a part of these
agreements. Japan has been pressured not to dump product on the domestic
market, but that is not government price fixing. Rather, Japan is being
pressured to sell the products on our market based on market demand and not
Japanese government price support.
Based on my chip purchases over the past 10 years, chip prices are
definitely higher today than two years ago and cheaper two years ago than four
years ago. So the market has fluctuated quite a bit both based on
supply/demand conditions as well as on US trade pressure on Japan. Note that
recent NAFTA agreement might impact on the prices of chips coming from other
parts of the world. Although Japan is a major producer, so is Mexico, Taiwan,
and Korea.
As for your last comment, well that's business. Free market
competition means, also, the opportunity to crowd out competition. However, I
think what you really mean is that business would rather operate in a monopoly
than in perfect competition. Neither, however, need operate outside of a free
market, which really has more to do with minimizing external (government)
influence. In fact most businesses prefer it. Just keep in mind that Japanese
business is not free market nor do the Japanese believe in free markets. They
relish government interference since it is usually favorable for them.
To bring this all back down to the issue that first started it, my friend
bought 4 megs of 1×4 ZIPs for 200 bucks from Memory World, and I installed them
lickity split in about an hour, and everything worked fine. As a word of
caution, when installing any memory chip, and especially the ZIPs, make sure
that you apply equal pressure across as much of the top of the chip (when
pushing it down into the slot) as possible. I used both hands when installing
the chip, and I had no bending problems (which I ran into the last time I tried
this).
-R
Gee, Rusty, you're just about as good as VisionWorks — glasses in just about
an hour!! Seriously, glad you got the chips installed.