Re-tooling would add to the project cost, if it were done now.
I'm not even sure that re-tooling would be necessary, I haven't taken a *ist-d apart, anyone been that brave yet?
Herb Chong wrote:
the cost of the part would have been minimal, but the assembly line tooling wouldn't have been. for a camera that has to cost Pentax at most $500 to make, and probably under $400, a production run of well under 100K, on a brand new line, when the company had lost money for 3 years in a row before, it had to cut all costs possible. they had no intention of full support from the beginning and the firmware update was a fortuitous coincidence of the hardware design. new lenses going forth aren't going to have aperture rings and everything A and forward works fully. they made a good business decision to drop full support for pre A lenses. with the faster drop in price than planned and significantly lower than forecast sales, the *istD could net losing money anyway.
Herb...
----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter J. Alling" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 10:43 AM
Subject: Re: istDs - what a great camera!
That's right tooling and assembly jigs cost considerably more, if it's
designed in from the beginning the additional cost
can be minuscule. In this case it probably would have been.
--
I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners - two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime.
--P.J. O'Rourke
