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

[Richard Meyer]

On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 22:28 +0800, 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.
> 
> 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".

You're right there, IBM tried to set up a hardware assembly line in WA
in the early 90s and found that their $120 .au keyboards were not
selling as well as $20 Taiwanese jobs that were actually more robust
(for some unknown reason).  ;-)

> 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 ?

Another thing is chip manufacturing requires massive amounts of water
and puts out quite a lot of toxic waste. Intel were having problems at
their Arizona(?) fab (may be New Mexico) becuase of the huge amounts of
water they were using.
> 
> > 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.

Software is a good direction to go in. I'm amazed at just how many
Aussies there are churning out good free software.

-- 
Richard Meyer <meyerri at westnet.com.au>
Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity.  It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation.
                -- Johnny Hart