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Subject: Re: cant make a dime on upgrades
From: mchale@zk3.dec.com
Reply To: mapug@shore.net
Date: Thu Nov 03 07:02:32 1994

In response to: > why should meade be any different than (let's say) a PC manufacturer?
>you very seldom get an offer like "hey, i realize we sold you this
>40mhz model a year ago, so send us $$$$, and we'll RE-FIT your old
>computer with 60mhz stuff! then you'll have our show-piece of our
>newest technology."

I get these offers on a regular basis; In the PC and Mac market several vendors offer upgrades, which means competition; On my mac I have cpu and disk accelerators; the price of moving upstream to the newer accelerators from daystar (to pick a company), is typically the difference between list prices of the products :)

>
> i'm sort of amazed that they offer these upgrades in the first place,
>because it really is a pain in the butt from their perspective. the
>simple fact that they _are_ offering an upgrade path is evidence that
>they really do care about their existing customers. but it's still a
>pain to them, nonetheless.

I disagree; As a supplier (and consumer) of the upgrades I did not find them to be a pain in the butt; Yes they were more work to put out, but it meant a larger user base, and more users mean we sell more accessories..

> in an ideal world, we would always have access to the best, most
>recent of everything, as it turns out, we have to start major lawsuits
>to get people like GM to admit that putting fuel tanks on the outside
>of a truck's frame was a bad idea. talk about bad P.R. do you think their
>recent news is affecting current sales?? not by the numbers they've
>just posted.

GM has a lot of revenue to rely on, and a huge infrastructure. I dont think meade has quite the revenue stream, or bureaucracy that GM has; I think it says quite a bit that meade has a VP listening to this group; I hope Ron has time to read all this good stuff :)

-jim