On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 09:35:17AM +0200, Toni Mueller wrote: > Ugh. WHY do they do this? Naively, I would assume that producing a > larger quantity of the same thing (which works) should be cheaper than > supporting an ever-changing zoo of devices, also for them? But then I > may have overlooked something significant.
My guess (based on no more knowledge than anyone else on this list has) is that the vendors are thrift shoppers. They get some special discount from different manufacturers at different times, and they don't care that the chips are slightly different because they have the full specs of the hardware they buy and the sources to their Windows-only drivers, which are easy to modify in support of the various bits of hardware. It might even be a self-perpetuating thing too - consider that they buy a metric ton of 802.11g chips at some discount price (say US $5/chip). Their business model suddenly becomes predicated on being able to get chips at that price for all eternity. When those chips are used up and the manufacturer is no longer offering the discount (now they want $7/chip), they are then forced to shop around for a manufacturer that will sell them chips for the $5 price. Again, this is just a guess. I have no special knowledge of the workings of such things. bc [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
