[plug][OT] Who's a Good Hardware Supplier in Perth?

[Craig Ringer]

On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 21:07 +0800, Chris Caston wrote:

> But is anyone else working in IT becoming serious sick of all the stuff
> that we import all the time?

Sick of it? Not really. Worried about it in an economic sense? Yes. I
don't see that much can be done currently, though, and it's something
I'm hoping will balance out with other sectors.

If we can stop importing so much expensive software from US companies,
that'll be a good start.

> How about we start building components in Australia of superior quality.
> Industrial quality motherboards and the like. They will cost more
> because are labour and currency is more expensive but if they last
> longer are require less servicing and replacement (less issues with
> crappy SiS chipsets) then it should cost less in the long-run .

I wish that were the case. I remain unconvinced, however:

   (a) we expect PC systems to be retired within ~5 years anyway,
       since we all want faster ones. This is even true for servers,
       though their life cycle tends to be longer. There are also
       components you can't do much about like disks.
   (b) I think the prices might not be "more expensive" so much as
       "massively more expensive".

I'd prefer to buy local produce ... but not when I expect it'd cost 3x
as much, and most likely not be that much better, if at all. I don't
think I'd trust any local HDD manufacturer without some time to prove
themselves; ditto CPUs.

I can see maybe a Via-style slow and cheap box market... but I'd be
really surprised to see a market for all-Australian servers or desktops.

I'm rather more optimistic about the software industry in Australia,
personally. Hardware requires a massive startup and on-going investment,
with low costs and huge volumes to be expensive. Or would you pay $70
for a 10/100 NIC from .au Inc when you can buy a gigabit Realtek for
$12 ?

> Would it be possible to have an Australian made PC (from Australia
> components) with for example a 10 year warranty?  

I don't think so. Do we even have any CPU makers here (even embedded
CPUs) ?

> Also I would like to see (and carry out myself IT work) that helps
> Australian firms export our own native produce and finished products. 

I don't see how we could be competitive. Australians want to get paid
too much ;-) and our government is unlikely to offer the sort of tax
breaks required to make something like that able to start up and compete
with Taiwan.

--
Craig Ringer