Hi Ron; Interesting..
I knew the engineer who was Mgr. for the Pentium Group at Intel. he told me that all the CPUs came off the same Fab. They were tested and graded for performance. The better ones (fast) were sold at a premium. The poorer ones were the Celeron line of CPU. When I was in school I worked at the Hubline Bottling plant in Palo Alto. I put Vodka bottles on a belt at the beginning of the filling process. I had huge pallets of glass bottles around me. I would flip a case of bottles on the belt at a time. When I came on duty.. The manager told me what size they were filling at the time. This might be a quart, fifth, pint or 1/2 pint. The bigger stuff was on another line. There were 3 brands: Smirnoff, Popoff and something that began with an R and had a Russian Logo on the bottle. It didn't matter what brand of bottle I placed on the belt, as long as the bottle was the right size for the run. I asked one of the suit and tie guys about the difference in branding, noting that all the vodka that went in the bottles was the same. The cost between the expensive stuff and the cheap stuff was vast. He told me that the glass bottle on the Smirnoff product had more expensive art work and that more money was spent marketing that product so the price was higher. "It's all in the marketing son" as I recall. pete -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Ron D'Eau Claire Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 4:15 PM To: 'Elecraft Reflector' Subject: RE: [Elecraft] Experience with off brand Lithium AAs? Pete wrote: I've been told that there are but 3 or 4 actual (major) manufactures of consumer batteries in world and that Union Carbide is the only large one here. All the "branding" is from the 3 or 4 makers. Do you have any idea if this is true? ------------------------ Some years ago I wrote a documentary film about the manufacture of tires in the USA. One of the interesting points I learned about was that brand-name tires end up with all sorts of "off-brand" labels in service stations, discount dealerships, etc. While all the tires came from the same assembly line, the tires were *not* the same! At the final testing stages of the tires they were graded according to the quality of the finished product. Any tire safe to run on a vehicle was sold. Only the tires meeting the highest standards got the manufacturer's 'brand' name on them. All lesser quality tires received various other brands. Those other buyers knew exactly what they were getting. Each one had certain specifications the tires had to meet; they just weren't as high quality as the "branded" tires. Poorer tires went for less, all the way down to those just good enough to use at all. So, while all the tires came from the same plant, they were definitely *not* equal. I ran into the same thing in both automobile manufacturing and the manufacture of gasoline in the USA. (Journalism can be very interesting!) In that case it was a major American tire manufacturer who sold a variety of automobile models in different price ranges. Almost anyone familiar with the cars knew that a part from one model, such as a wheel bearing, would fit on other models as well. But they weren't equal. The parts for the higher-priced models were purchased with much tighter specifications and quality standards than those for the lower priced models. That allowed parts suppliers to sell more of their parts since not every part has to meet the same high standards, so they could charge less overall. The auto manufacturer could then sell the 'lesser' models for less because of lower parts costs. In almost every case the difference was in reliability and performance. For example, a big issue with tires is what they called "conicity" - or the "roundness" of the tire with weight on it - hence, how smoothly it rides. Yes, all gasoline is indistinguishable when it flows from the refinery. But, when it arrives at the distribution station, lots of chemicals are added to it that give each "brand" it's unique properties and features. I never did a report on battery manufacturing, but I'd be astonished if the same thing wasn't true of them as well. Do you always get more if you pay more? Absolutely not. But that doesn't make the corollary true. You don't get the same quality when you pay less. Even if you know the part came from the same plant. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. 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