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

[Chris Caston]

On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 22:28, Craig Ringer wrote:
> 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.

I think we should give all the farms scheme water instead of blowing all
that money on drought relief year after year. It doesn't have to be the
government. Could be private industry (even though I said scheme) that
starts providing water.

There are also ways of making deep sea vents that use the differences in
pressure (I think) to push fresh cold water up to the land above.

Then we can export more A grade produce to countries with no or little
farm land left.
 

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

Yes, but we have a free trade agreement with them...
> 
> > 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.

That's true. The rate of processor development has slowed down but other
areas like wireless, s/m/voip, hd dvd, hard drive and ram speeds are
increasing. 
>    (b) I think the prices might not be "more expensive" so much as
>        "massively more expensive".
> 
Did you ever own a Microbee?

"Overall, several hundred thousand MicroBee units were manufactured at
Terrigal, near Gosford, N.S.W., ranging from the MicroBee 32K with just
32k bytes of CMOS RAM, utilising acoustic tapes for program/data
long-term storage, to MicroBee64 models, some offering colour, equipped
with floppy drives, running the CP/M operating system. "

http://homepage.cs.latrobe.edu.au/image/history/microbee.html

Also check out some nice pics:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~mikeleys/microbee.html

Almost makes me feel like I would if I saw my first love again.


> 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.

Yeah but the rule of manufacturing. Export the best. Keep the rest for
the locals.

> 
> 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.
> 
AMI sell motherboards made in the US but they aren't cheap.

> 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 ?
> 

And what's the markup on that $1? 

I'm still paying that much for the 10/100's

Depends on the application of course. Do you want a Realtek that is
going to suck up CPU time and is more likely to fail and bring a
manufacturing plant or airline terminal to a standstill?


> > 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) ?

Yeah but we couldn't probably get away with a fab plant for one of the
big 2.
> 
> > 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.
> 

That's another issue. This country isn't going to be very competitive
with a taxation system advocated in the communist manifesto ie
progressive tax brackets and steep company taxes that push smart and
ambitious Australian firms to move to countries like Singapore. 

 
> --
> Craig Ringer
> 
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