Re: [OT]What's the price index of your laptop's battery?
Klistvud wrote:
> Agreed, it's spare parts. But buying a spare battery for your car will
> hardly set you back for 14% of the total cost of a new car.
>
> It seems I may have phrased my question awkwardly, so let's try to
> rephrase it:
>
> Would you ever buy a car -- or even a mobile phone -- where the spare/
> replacement battery cost 14% of the entire car/phone retail price? Say
> you got the cheapest Clio or Fiesta for just under 10.000€, but would
> have to pay over 1400€ for a replacement battery when the old one died?
> Now, that would be an extremely peculiar business model in my view ;)
You compare things that can't be compared: your laptop is powered by the
battery, while your car is powered by the engine. A replacement engine
for a car can easily cost 14% of the total cost of a new car. And this
is still a silly comparison.
At today's markets you can easily find a torch that's cheaper than good
rechargeable batteries to power it. Some years ago the market was
different, the quality of batteries was lower and the price ratio more
in favour of torches.
All this in mind, you might still have a valid point that prices for
spare batteries for laptops are too high. This is not a truly free
market, since there are too many different types of batteries, posing a
high barrier for market entry, and manufacturers try to impose a kind of
monopoly for replacement batteries (quite similar to the situation of
replacement ink cartridges).
--
Johannes
Three nations have not officially adopted the International System
of Units as their primary or sole system of measurement: Burma,
Liberia, and the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_units
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