HDD Price Update: How the Thai Floods Have Affected Prices, 3 Months Later 220
New submitter jjslash writes "The hard disk drive supply chain was hit hard late last year when a series of floods struck Thailand. The Asian country accounts for about a quarter of the world's hard drive production, but thousands of factories had to close shop for weeks as facilities were under water, in what is considered the world's fourth costliest natural disaster according to World Bank estimates. That's on top of the human cost of over 800 lives. TechSpot has monitored a number of mobile and desktop HDDs to get a better overview of how the situation has developed in the last three months."
Why the "but"? (Score:5, Insightful)
the Asian country accounts for about a quarter of the world's hard drive production, but thousands of factories had to close shop for weeks as facilities
"and" would be better as "but" implies that there's some sort of twist.
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Re:Why the "but"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if they only counted for 1/4th of the production and the price is marked up over 100% I think an investigation is in order because i smell price gouging.
What you should investigate is this concept called price elasticity of demand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand [wikipedia.org]
http://www.khanacademy.org/video/price-elasticity-of-demand?topic=microeconomics [khanacademy.org]
Once you've understood that, you also have to realize they still have to pay the wages of many staff, plus other overheads (interest on loans from banks) despite the X% drop in sales.
Before this disaster hard drive manufacturers were NOT making a lot of money from each hard drive they sell - tell me in which other industry could you buy a device with high tech, high precision, high speed moving parts with rare earth metals, that can operate nonstop, spinning at 7200 rpm for a few years with zero maintenance- no lube changes, no adjustments, with a three year warranty, for USD60 or less?
Now because of the shortage prices went up, there were fewer drives to go around, so to try to make as much money to pay for their costs (or not lose so much money) they charged higher. But charging higher means fewer customers will be willing to pay the higher prices. So the rest of the customers who REALLY NEED those drives and are the only ones willing to buy will have to pay even more. Or maybe decide they don't really need those drives that much. So the hard drive sellers and buyers will have to see who blinks first. If enough buyers blink and buy, then the price stays high.
That's how it works, you'd do the same thing too if you wanted to stay in business.
As for me, I'm playing my part by not buying yet... I might save up to buy an SSD instead ;).
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Some buyers need drives more than others. Some buyers are willing to pay more. That's always true. So when there are suddenly fewer drives to sell they get sold to the buyers willing to pay more. That's why the prices went up. That's why prices always go up when there's suddenly less supply. Nobody cares about your costs.
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Long story short there's not that much soft demand in the market, those of us who'll move an old disk or have more disks in one machine are a small minority, assuming people have an old machine to pick from. By far most people, not only in the OEM market but also in the spot market want to buy complete PCs with an preinstalled OS and whatnot, which you can't do without a HDD. The price of the HDD almost doesn't matter because if they can't get HDDs, they're stuck with inventory of CPUs and GPUs and memory a
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What I'm detecting from your direction whiffs more like complete economic ignorance.
Re:Why the "but"? (Score:4, Insightful)
That can only happen if any one of the manufacturers produced enough to supply all the OEM needs.
And there's not a lot of evidence of that.
Looks like it's getting better... (Score:4, Interesting)
NewEgg is actually having sales on something besides "recertfied" drives.
Quick summary (Score:5, Informative)
Prices are still high, but not as much as they were at the peak last November. Instead of 80-190% above the pre-flood prices, they are now 60-90% up.
This probably should've been part of the article summary.
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Still far too high to upgrade; I can wait out the year with the storage space I currently have.
I am not going to pay ~$175 for 'Intellipower' / 5900 RPM 2 TB drives, when I have a few 7200 RPM 1.5 TB drives already installed (which I picked up for ~$120 / drive at the time). Perhaps when I see some 7200 RPM 3 TB drives for a nicer price, I might be moved to upgrade. However, as it stands, I've already figured that this year will not have the price offering I want...so, I'll wait until next year when 7200 RP
Re:Quick summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus, the Seagate CEO's offhanded remarks about having the customers up against a wall (reading between the lines, of course)...are rather vexing.
It's kind of tough for you. It takes a long time to build a hard drive factory (you're talking about a cycle of about a decade). It will take a long time for prices to drop back, and you're probably looking at a new level for exponential decay of price per gigabyte to decay from. But the worst part is that you have to realize that there's no reason there won't be another such catastrophe. OK, the details might be different (earthquake, volcano, war, etc.) but the effect on prices of some critical component could be just the same anyway. Any time there's a concentration of high-tech factories anywhere in the world, there's an increase in risk.
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I am not going to pay ~$175 for 'Intellipower' / 5900 RPM 2 TB drives, when I have a few 7200 RPM 1.5 TB drives already installed (which I picked up for ~$120 / drive at the time).
Amen. I also seriously dislike how certain producers no longer tell you the rotational speed. As this directly affects access time, it's an important number. For certain uses (MOST uses, actually), being able to stream huge files twice as fast as your old drive is not going to outweigh a much higher access time.
WDC was my choice, but after they dropped the rpm and started with meaningless marketing words, I won't I buy them. Whatever marketing boss came up with this has cost the company very real sales.
Re:Looks like it's getting better... (Score:5, Funny)
It's about buying smart. Instead of buying recertified drives, go for drives that really like the water like Barracudas and Caviar.
Re:Looks like it's getting better... (Score:4, Funny)
If I buy one of those two models my data will be eaten alive, and boy will I have egg on my face then.
Re:Looks like it's getting better... (Score:5, Funny)
So I suppose a Quantum Fireball is out of the question then?
Quantum Fireball Ha Dou Ken! (Score:2)
Ha Dou Ken!
Now you know where that fireball that hit you last week came from.
Quantum Fireball indeed!
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Then if you want killer performance, buy a Deskstar.
Of course, they'll self-destruct due to some sort of internal defect and scatter your data across the platters.
Fear economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fear economics (Score:5, Insightful)
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it isn't 'bad' economics unless we lost more during the rebuild time than we saved by not having overbuilt...
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I'm sorry, but this is imply bullshit. What we are dealing with is not "fear economics", but with the consequences of overemphasizing efficiency over resilience and/or robustness. And at the root of that is that that is what economic "thinking" teaches economic actors to do.
Economics will merrily quantify the level of risk associated with a decision (possibly wrongly; this is an area of current research as it is becoming clear that the simple models previously used were thoroughly bogus) but it won't tell you what the decision should actually be. Nor will professional management practice. Alas, lots of people think that they do and that they have to optimize the system (or their part of it) under the assumption that everything is working perfectly. This is stupid, but all too
Secondhand market is still hit hard (Score:2)
...large capacity drives are still at the same price as new ones the same size were in May last year... I'm not even going to look at prices for new drives at the moment.
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Pricewatch? The damage didn't seem too bad.
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OK, I was brave... my regular supplier has Barracuda 7200.12 SATA II 1TB in for £95 delivered. Not bad, considering what's happened and the fact that the last external drive I bought was £60 (2TB), middle of last year.
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Fuck the 800 lives (Score:2, Insightful)
I want to know how much its going to cost me to stash another TB worth of shit music, porn, and absolute garbage movies and tv shows god damnit!
Re:Fuck the 800 lives (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fuck the 800 lives (Score:5, Funny)
OMFG that means for the same price I will only be able to stash half the garbage I will never consume!!!!
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Yes, it's about US10c/GB over here. And that's down from anywhere 20C/GB and up at the height of the gouging. Cheers.
And people actually do wonder.. (Score:2, Insightful)
About sales going down, while prices are going up. In hundreds of $
Those pesky customers, always making problems in free market. Market would do infinitely better without them.
Just wait.... (Score:5, Informative)
The initial price shock from speculation, panic-buying and hoarding may be coming down somewhat, but as the article alludes towards the end, the real impact might last throughout this year. There haven't been actual shortages on that many products so far, and when real shortages show up prices could stay high or go higher even with people cutting down as much as they can on drive purchases. (I know several popular and/or performance drives have sold out at PC makers, especially on their build-your-own websites, but most products never ran completely dry.)
Not to mention that while vendors have a lot of tactics for dealing with shortages, from back-stock to supply contract clauses entitling them to extra shipments of already manufactured inventory during crises, none of those tricks can't make new hard drives appear out of nowhere. The wiggle room such tactics enable will be drying up about now. Eventually even commodity drives could feel the squeeze as supplies on more and more drives threaten to run out entirely, despite the high prices. Because there's a lot of pent-up demand and it sounds like many of those plants still aren't nearing full capacity again.
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Well, look at the lead time on a hard drive factory. You can probably get one up and running in what, a year?
Hard drives are still cheap, in historical terms, and HDD is the limiting factor for many systems - nobody runs out of CPU, only servers and power users (programmers, video editors, numerical scientists) run out of RAM, and Intel graphics are now sufficient for some tasks (gasp).
People held off because they were higher than usual, but now that the price is going down (not up) demand will pick up agai
Re:Just wait.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lies. We can never have enough CPUs, as long as you are speaking about cores or sockets on a motherboard. We could have CPUs with 10,000 cores on them, taking 512-bit words, and it still wouldn't be enough.
And Intel graphics are never sufficient. I have yet to encounter anyone who has gone 6 months with an actual machine with an integrated Intel graphics chip-set, and not have them hunger for something better.
It's the same old sad story every time ->
"I just like to browse the internet and do email, I don't need anything fancy."
"Yes, you do."
"Well, the model I was looking at is $200 cheaper than the one you recommended."
"That's because I'm speccing in your need for decent video performance 3 months from now, when you discover gaming / Photoshop / Aero Glass / CAD / whatever."
"You know what? I'm going to get the cheaper one. I don't need the video performance."
3 months later:
"Dude, I was trying to play WoW on my computer, and it's really slow!"
"Do go on."
"Yeah man, they pushed out a new patch, and even with the details turned all the way down, the machine lags."
"Really. I wouldn't have imagined that."
"So, can you help me purchase a good video card?"
*facepalms*
Or alternatively:
"Yeah, I saw my friend with a Mac, and it does everything really well. I think I'll buy one, because, you know, everything just works."
"Only one of your applications actually runs on that operating system."
"Yeah, I think I'll manage. I want to get away from this Microsoft stuff."
3 days later:
"Could you install Office on my Mac for me?"
"No."
"Come on. Here's my discs and..."
"These discs are for a Windows computer."
"But the guy at the Apple store told me the Mac could run Windows..."
"Yes, if you use Boot Camp, and obtain a licensed copy of Windows, sure. Same as any other computer."
"So, I can't run Office on my Mac?"
"No, no. You can, you just need to shell out some more money for the Mac version. Good luck with that."
"Well, can you still install it for me? After I get the discs?"
"No. I do not do Macs. I do not own one, I do not want one, and I do not want to learn about Apple's products." - a slight lie, as the first machine I dicked around with was an Apple. Still, it is a loophole that allows the Windows / Linux techs to feign lack of knowledge, and allows us to (thank God) finally emerge from tech support hell for these kinds of people. Let the geniuses at the Apple store deal with them for a while, as we have for the past two decades...as we all know what it inevitably devolves into...midnight phone calls, requests to drive to far away places (using your own gas and time), and a fair amount of disrespect. I just need to put my fingers in my ears, and hum, for several more years, while they tell me that because their MacBook is having trouble renewing its DHCP address when it resumes from hibernation mode, it must be a problem with my network.
But back on topic. We can never have enough CPUs, never enough cores on those CPUs, never enough CPU sockets (even on consumer grade stuff), never enough RAM (I just want a motherboard with 16 RAM slots per CPU), and yes, we can never have enough hard disk space. Or x16 slots...if I can't fit a dozen two-slot video cards into a single motherboard, we haven't gone far enough. Or enough cache. And no, I don't care that cache performance theoretically deteriorates as the size increases. It's up there with being too healthy, or being too wealthy, or too alive, or too free.
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1) If you pay any reasonable price, more CPU and memory is generally wasted. My Macbook Air rarely fells slow, and it's running a crappy C2D. Any modern system (i5 and up) will be fine.
2) I think you are underestimating the current Intel GPUs. I'd still advise a basic dedicated GPU if you play any games at all, but Intel is finally making GPUs which are not complete crap. Intel on new chips is now comparable to low-end outdated dedicated GPUs.
The first generation Intel GPU was the GMA 900, in 2004, on P4 ch
Re:Just wait.... (Score:4, Insightful)
...as we all know what it inevitably devolves into...midnight phone calls, requests to drive to far away places (using your own gas and time), and a fair amount of disrespect.
You know what makes this easy? Tell them fixing computers is a side job of yours and you don't do it for free for anyone. They can pay your hourly rate (at a "discount") or barter something with you in exchange for your time. Otherwise, they can go elsewhere. After all, you wouldn't ask a plumber friend to fix your toilet for free, would you? (And if you did, you're an asshole in my book.)
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Exactly, time is worth something. My policy is that for most people I fix computers for a living that means I want something in return even if it's just dinner. As a side note: my best barter ever was a guy who really messed up his computer several times and his wife was a professional massage therapist.
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Did you get a happy ending?
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Exactly, time is worth something. My policy is that for most people I fix computers for a living that means I want something in return even if it's just dinner.
If you're knowledgeable about computers to the degree that everyone asks you to fix their problems, then I suggest everyone in this position "fix computers as a side business". There are many advantages.
1) The free ride for friends and family is immediately over. (Might not be able to get out of the family obligation, but you can certainly get out of the friends one.)
2) They'll decide that if they're going to pay, they'll pay Best Buy or similar to handle it instead. After spending about 4-10x as much money
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midnight phone calls, requests to drive to far away places (using your own gas and time), and a fair amount of disrespect
It seems that you are a good person, trying to help others. Unfortunately, it seems to be a very bad side in the nature of some people that this doesn't get you any respect, quite the opposite. Try this: Next time you meet one of these people, and people discuss what to do, you suggest going to some nice restaurant and you say loud enough that it can't be missed: "You pay". When they ask why, you say "well, I solved this problem for you for free, didn't I"?
So what happens? They might never ask for your h
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It's up there with being too healthy, or being too wealthy, or too alive, or too free.
More like there's far more water in the tap or far more electricity in the wires than I'm going to use. Going from 4 to 16 MB and 4 to 16 GB is the same mathematically, but the former was a huge upgrade and the latter a luxury. Before, how many applications/windows/tabs I'd have open was limited by the computer, too many and it'd slow down. Today it's practically only limited by how many I think is manageable to work with, today I could within "prosumer" prices get 8x8GB on a LGA2011 board and it's not that
A lot of people are talking about a laptop (Score:2)
Unless you're talking about a laptop, upgrading to a discrete GPU after three months isn't much of a WTF
A lot of people are talking about a laptop, even if you don't plan to take it on the road. You might just want one computer that can be more easily carted back and forth between the desk and the entertainment center (to use for big-screen gaming or as an HTPC for free Hulu), or a computer with a built-in UPS.
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You realize that only the first half of your post was about CPUs, right?
Also, for future reference, a much shorter answer to "Well, can you still install it for me? After I get the discs?" is "It's easy: put the disc in the machine and then follow the instructions that automatically appear."
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We can never have enough CPUs, never enough cores on those CPUs, never enough CPU sockets (even on consumer grade stuff), never enough RAM (I just want a motherboard with 16 RAM slots per CPU), and yes, we can never have enough hard disk space.
You only need so much hardware power as the task at hand requires. The last decades have seen constant growth as the tasks we do with computers expanded. Early computers where mostly text and even rather slow computers can handle that, but then came graphics and thus higher requirements for GPU/CPU, then came 3D graphics and then video and there was a constant demand for new hardware. Instead of storing the work of a day on a floppy, we went to storing the work of a month on a HDD, now we are at a point whe
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You know, those conversations could go very differently if you think about what you say instead of looking for opportunities to look down on people.
Like this:
"Could you install Office on my Mac for me?" "No." "Come on. Here's my discs and..." "These discs are for a Windows computer." "But the guy at the Apple store told me the Mac could run Windows..." "Only if you have Windows installed on your Mac. The simplest thing to do is buy a licensed copy of Windows and install it using Boot Camp, then your Windows programs can work. I don't do Macs though so I can't help you - just go to an Apple Store and ask someone there.
Only problem is that the support person is overlooking the fact that in the process of installing MS Office & Windows, the customer will have to forget all the Mac apps that he is using. Need to ask him whether he's okay w/ that, and if so, why's he going w/ Apple, which is so much more expensive? The last thing this person wants is to be bombarded w/ questions later when his entire box is overhauled into a PC, as to why his favorite Mac apps no longer work.
As an aside, I've never for the life of m
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Digital Cameras? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Thai floods also disrupted the supply chain for digital cameras. It would be interesting to know how things are doing on that front.
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We were looking at the D7000 last October, originally planning to buy one in early January. We went into the camera store, and they told us they were out of stock due to the flooding (but, a few weeks after Christmas, they filed bankruptcy, so I suspect there was more to the story than flooding). Fearing there would be a shortage and we wouldn't be able to get one when we were planning, we went online and bought the camera immediately.
Looks like it's a good thing we bought when we did. Of course that pro
spot market effect (Score:5, Interesting)
I think lots of people don't understand what happened with Newegg and other retailers. As someone explained it to me, a drive maker like WD has two kinds of customers:
1) big systems integrators like Lenovo, Dell, HP, etc., who order 100K drives at a time or more
2) Smaller customers (e.g. resellers) like Newegg, who order maybe 1k drives at a time. If someone wants just 5 drives they have to buy from a distributor or retailer like Newegg.
The very big customers will order their 100k drives at some preagreed price, delivered over (say) a 3-6 month interval per their production schedules. WD also plans its own production around such large orders. If they get (say) 1 million drives worth of such orders for 1Q2012, they'll (normally) set up their production to make (say) 1.3 million drives, deliver 1 million of them per the pre-agreed contracts, and put 0.3 million on the shelf for to fulfill "spot market" orders from places like Newegg. Depending on market conditions and what the competition is doing, the spot price will fluctuate above or sometimes below what the big OEM's pay.
When the Thai floods hit, production was cut from (say) 1.3 million to 0.9 million. There was no way to fulfill the agreed contracts, understandable due to the disaster, but they had to make the best effort they could, which meant hand ALL their drives over to OEM's while the likes of Newegg got nothing. So the prices of integrated systems actually didn't jump that much, but spot prices skyrocketed.
Now that we're a few months into the drama, the OEM's are in a new ordering cycle, they get to pay higher prices too, but WD gets to again allocate some drives to spot inventory. So we'll be seeing higher prices from Dell over the coming months, but some relief on the Newegg side (though the prices will still be higher than before, until around 3Q or 4Q from what I keep hearing).
Re:Cut out the middleman then. (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? The manufacturers aren't legally forbidden from selling you 3 drives if that's what they want to do. They just don't want to deal with running a retail operation. It's just like if you call a shoe manufacturer like Nike and say you want to buy a pair of running shoes. They will refer you to a shoe store, since they don't want to deal with smaller quantities.
Also remember that the OEM contracts were significant in the above picture because they were agreed BEFORE the floods, and locked in pre-flood prices that stayed in force for months after the flood. So even if WD were willing to sell you 1-2 drives directly, you would have had to order before the flood to get the low price. After the flood, if they had inventory to sell you that hadn't already been committed to other customers, they would have charged market prices the same as Newegg did.
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(and evidence of fixing in relation to this disaster, if found, should absolutely be used to prosecute to the fullest)
Very hard to prove without getting someone to confess to it. Prices behaved in the sort of way you'd expect given the basic nature of the market; small resellers felt the pinch first and large OEMs later, which is entirely attributable to the timescales of the contracts involved.
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how is this for a reason:
drive manufactures DO NOT WANT TO SELL TO YOU because your 2-5 hard drive order is insignificant for them
they do want to sell to newegg and anybody else willing to purchase few thousands drives so you and few thousands more people could gather up and make one big order and split drives among yourself (it would actually end up more expensive that way than buying from neweg, but nobody is stopping you from doing that)
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If they're allocating a set amount of drives to go to resellers, they can most certainly allocate to smaller granularities. It's not as if other products, such as whole computers, have problems with manufacturers directly selling to people as well as to resellers.
Package them as quantities padded on to shipments of larger orders, and save on shipping as well.
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Still not a good enough argument to not require a reasonable and non-discriminatory (as determined by the end user) way to buy directly.
Sure. You buy 10k drives and the manufacturer will be very happy to deal with you direct; they won't mind that at all. What they won't do is sell in small lots, nor can you force them to. If you only want a small number, it's simpler to buy from a middleman (such as Newegg) so you don't have to hold a vast inventory of drives you don't want or run a retail operation to dispose of the unwanted kit.
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Then you get treated like a small reseller, who is then pointed to another middleman.
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With sugar, it would be far easier to get to the minimum order quantity.
A pallet box's worth of sugar is cheaper than a pallet box's worth of drives. Depending on packaging, it might even weigh about as much.
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No one is preventing you from buying direct, they just have minimum order quantities. Are you suggesting that it would be a good idea to make minimum order quantities illegal? If you legally required them to single hard drives in single units they would just set the price absurdly high anyway, and give big discounts in quantities over 1000. Would you then suggest that the government legislate sales prices to manufacturers? In an industry that is constantly innovating and lowering prices and generally works
That's why I said "on RAND terms". (Score:2)
Try re-reading what I just said, since I had stated something that would deny them that avenue of jackassery.
Reasonable and non-discriminatory as determined by an un-influenced end-user would block the "go-away price".
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The more reason to legislatively block such a restriction, and allow direct sales to cut the middleman/resellers out.
Its allowed. There is no restriction.
The fact that they dont want to do business with people keen on forcing them into the retail business does not amount to a market failure. It amounts to a liberal, with a raging hard-on for the theory that business is evil, being given a subject to talk about that inevitably proves exactly how ignorant he is.
Try facts instead of political invective. (Score:2)
Wider availability of product != your insult.
I'm not asking for brick-mortar. I'm only cutting out the middlemen that have largely made things worse. But don't let that get in the way of your politically charged statements.
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. I'm only cutting out the middlemen that have largely made things worse.
You are so ignorant of a liberal that you actually think that waving your hands and saying something is equivalent to a reasoned, well thought out, argument.
You have not proposed to cut out the middle man. You have proposed that the factory be required to set up a very large warehouse to replace the entire worlds product buffer so that it can directly field your request for 5 drives.
It shouldn't be expensive anymore anyway. (Score:5, Informative)
If you've ever lived here, you know people try to outsmart everyone and an example of this would be claiming shortages of hard drives is keep prices high even known their supply chain in Ayuthaya (where most of this shit comes from) has been bone dry and their factories operating at capacity for at least 6 - 8 weeks.
Mind you, when I go to my IT Square near where I live, only a few days ago Hard Drive prices are relatively back to normal, yet overseas, are still super expensive compared to normal. Also Nikon cameras and glass are normal prices here (most DX DSLR's and glass are made in Ayuthaya) and again OS it's still more expensive than normal.
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If you think that factories can now "get away" with higher prices because they have the excuse of the flood then you don't understand in the slightest how pricing works. If they could "get away" with higher prices they would have already done so. There's no need to have an excuse. It's not some honor code that keeps prices down. Producers everywhere charge the amount that maximizes profit. The only thing that keeps prices down is the
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This won't do Thailand any favors though. If companies in Thailand report artificial shortages of product in order to keep prices high, that only creates incentives for companies to start up around the world to compete in the hard drive space.
Who do you think is going to put up these factories? The same guys who own the factories in Thailand, who are profiting by perpetrating this crime? It's almost like you were anonymous and cowardly because you knew what you were saying was complete bullshit.
Record profits. (Score:4, Funny)
Seagate had almost record profits this Quarter. WD did VERY good despite the flood.
Looks like the only one hurt was consumers, Corporations made out like bandits.
Is Apple affected? (Score:3)
We know that Apple is able to make some special deals with their suppliers due to them paying in advance or something like that, what I'd like to know: is anything known if (I suspect no, cause Mac prices seem stable) and if not, why they aren't affected by this?
No. (Score:2)
Their prices are already sky-high.
Re:My granny taught me (Score:4, Funny)
It is not wise to keep all your eggs in one basket. But it is probably too much to expect common sense from the hard drive industry.
25% isn't "all the eggs". Not even close.
Re:My granny taught me (Score:5, Informative)
Western Digital and Toshiba had factories in the flood zones whereas Seagate was mainly affected by the resulting supply constraints from business partners who were forced to halt production of related components. Among those was Nidec, which produces ~70% of the world's hard drive spindle motors.
Re:My granny taught me (Score:5, Informative)
Among those was Nidec, which produces ~70% of the world's hard drive spindle motors.
Single supplier, but not single site. Their web site [nidec.co.jp] says they have plants for spindle motors in Thailand, China, Indonesia, The Philippines and Vietnam. True, the 6 plants listed are all in Thailand but the implication that 70% of the drive motors are made in Thailand is false.
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Maybe we should just store our data inside people, they're cheap apparently.
"The data you requested is 101101001011010, no, wait, 10110100101101110, no, erm... wait, I got it, 1011010010110100112."
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Not recommended. Someone dies, that data is gone.
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Redundant Array Of Inexpensive Asians ? :)
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You'd get the same thing in "first world hellholes", only that the reason for production going down would be due to strikes and general laziness rather than natural catastrophes. Which, in addition, happen in first world countries as well occasionally.
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There are other countries in the world other than Japan.
To avoid hurricane and tornado disasters in the US, one could manufacture in states like Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, or Pennsylvania if not for business hostility to worker respect.
In the UK, that can be done in flood-resistant parts of that country.
Re: (Score:2)
Why aren't more factories in Colorado and Michigan then? Oh, because the workers there want to be paid an order of magnitude better than their "hellhole" counterparts, which... wait for it... would jack up the end price for the product. There's a reason these things are being manufactured there in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
Freedom for thee, but not for me?
It wouldn't jack up the prices much more than 30% at most.
Re: (Score:2)
An order of magnitude is more than 30%. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Given how little actual human labor goes is required for a lot of these products, and you get to save shipping around the world, the costs don't go up as much as you might think.>/p>
Plus, with more people in your market area working, you sell more product.
It's not done due to executive psycopathy and because the ROI takes more than 3 months to show up.
Re: (Score:2)
So why did you (or your predecessor) choose to locate the factories there?
You are CFO of an electronics company, right?
Re: (Score:2)
I cannot speak for hard disks in particular, but in general everything that can be produced by hand is produced by hand in countries where labor costs are cheaper than machines.
Re: (Score:3)
Generalizations and assumptions, Slashoogle at it's best. See http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html [mit.edu].
Re: (Score:2)
yeah, they should have built their factories in Queensland or New South Wales. or the UK...it's been at least a few years since they had a major flood.
after all, everyone knows that floods in predominantly white countries don't destroy factories due to the superior racial characteristics of the geography. and in QLD or NSW a bushfire is sure to come along soon and dry everything out.
Infrastructure & regulation, not race. (Score:2)
Economics and government coordination to disaster, not race are what make countries like Australia and the US, along with regions like the UK better at disaster response. That, and it helps to have some actual regulations to mitigate damage from said disasters, something unheard of in places like Thailand.
What I am suggesting is that dictatorial regimes such as Thailand, China, and Vietnam, as well as corrupted regimes such as India, Russia, Brazil, and Mexico would rather cut corners and freedoms so that
Re:Infrastructure & regulation, not race. (Score:5, Funny)
"Besides, arent hard disk prices saner in Australia?"
Yes but their drives wont work here. the platters spin the other direction.
Re: (Score:2)
Or you know, something smart that has been taught for centuries...
Build on the high ground.
Re: (Score:2)
One slight flaw: it's already been built on.
And I live in in Holland, you insensitive clod!!!!!
Re: (Score:3)
There's a flaw with that argument - it's easier for them to collect on the insurance and charge absurd sums to rebuild and retool than to do the job properly the first time.
Re:First world problem (Score:5, Informative)
This is a technical site for geeks and nerds, we simply don't need to cover that side of the story, it's been done elsewhere. The reality is, as nerds this is the important part to us. You can say we're emotionless or cruel or some other such word but those are the facts, it's a technical site, with technical news. If you want coverage of the other impact you need to look elsewhere.
Re:First world problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's needlessly critical. Of course there are great human disasters which don't fall under the umbrella of /. Just because this happened to be one which also has a major affect on the tech industry, doesn't mean the humane part of this is any less tragic. Still, people come to /. for tech news, and this is an interesting analysis on how the price of the drives have been affected, and that is what /. should report.
Lumping everybody together as basement-dwelling cold-hearted bastards who only care about cheap hardware is just as narrow-minded as you claim people reporting/reading this are. In fact, from my experience it seems that people reading /. are often more aware of international social issues than average.
Re: (Score:2)
So what was the technical aspect of this story? Nothing? Right. It was already covered elsewhere, whether it be political, non-political, or every news-site under the sun, and every other technical site under the sun. Take your sanctimonious ass elsewhere if that's so much of a problem.
But if you want to argue 'human rights' and 'fair wages' might I remind you that back in 'early days' of North America, Europe shipped all of their industry here. Including all of their child based mills, and basically s
Re:First world problem (Score:5, Informative)
What? I agree that Slashdot sometimes ignores stuff that matters a lot, but this was covered [slashdot.org], and there were a bunch of followup posts on Slashdot too.
If you are suggesting that people on Slashdot don't know about this event, you are delusional.
Also, I'm not going to take a bike ride in -26C, but if you want to take one in your cozy first world climate, be my guest.
Re: (Score:2)
You never traveled outside the place you live in? Must be American I guess?
Re: (Score:2)
let me contrast the headline with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami [wikipedia.org]
shashdot never reported this; the death toll was hundreds of times larger. slashdot didnt give a shit because it wasnt tech news; i sadly respect that.
And what's this? http://news.slashdot.org/story/04/12/26/1437228/quake-and-tsunami-devastate-south-asia [slashdot.org]
might i suggest instead that we crawl out of our basements,
You first. But don't forget to take your medication.