The boring rants of a lazy nerd

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Commerce - Ripoff, take 2

Following my previous rant on the topic of hardware prices in Israel, AnandTech published a new mid-range guide so I've made another spreadsheet. Again: this does not describe a full PC, this isn't the best combination of parts (not even price/performance wise) for every task, and you should really talk with someone knowledgeable who isn't getting any of your money before buying anything. Prices include shipping (either in US or in IL, appropriately).
HardwareRecommended ComponentUS PriceUS price in ISLIL priceripoff rate
ProcessorAMD Athlon 64 3200+ 512K 2.0GHz 90nm for 939 (Retail)200974130025.08%
MotherboardMSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (NF3 250Gb)146711.02101029.60%
MemoryCorsair Value Select 512MB DDR PC-3200 CL2.5 x 2120584.4140058.25%
Video Card6600GT AGP 128MB GDDR32101022.711007.03%
Hard DriveSeagate 160GB SATA w/ NCQ105511.3567023.68%
exchange rate:4.87
Finding an AGP video card in Israel is near impossible, and the prices for RAM are really excessive. Also, vendors don't really publish (or know themselves, I kid you not) the correct full specs (or at least the correct SKU) for products, so it's anyone's guess e.g. whether that DIMM is CAS-2.5 or CAS-3. Zap still has problems following the hardware industry, or it seems like their analyst is really lazy - their list or models and features is always out of date, and they don't sort out parts into models all that well (meaning they let vendors lie). This time, the ripoff-rate is the markup for living here, instead of the proportion of local prices to US prices. Oh, and I have to say I'm impressed with the Mac Mini. Not enough to buy one, but still - If it had a G5, a gig of RAM, a 7200rpm hard drive and 6-channel audio (for double the price, let's say) - I'd be all over it.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

(overall site)
intelligence does exist

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