hdd prices??

[ik9000]

What's wrong with his post? Not everyone follows tech news, and if you don't, that news would come as a shock, and those are obvious questions to ask. Maybe he's blatantly going after post count, and for the obvious reason, but his posts are fine and certainly way above the blatant ones I remove.

Please let the mods deal with post count spammers, because to accuse someone of that that may well not be doing it is not much of a welcome to the forums, is it? We're friendlier than that. Aren't we?

fair enough but would we really be the people to know if they managed to salvage any equipment?

[imbann]

I just bought a WD external harddrive my passport 500g from pc world for only 48 pounds, a good deal...I am gonna use it as storage hard drive alone with incoming crucial m4 128G SSD, waiting for WD internal hard drive price to drop next year and planning to buy a green 1TB one

[Saracen]

fair enough but would we really be the people to know if they managed to salvage any equipment?

Quite possibly.

Let me put it this way. As a journalist, I've been to computer manufacturing facilities all over the world, all round Europe, all over the US and in the Far East. Not only that, I've had and/or got contacts with all sorts of people, both at the pointy end in plants, and at board level. For instance, I've visited Epson's ink cartridge manufacturing facility in Japan, had meetings with their President and was invited by the UK Marketing director. I've been to dinner with Finis Conner (one of the founders of Seagate), and with the CEO of Lexmark (several times), and even with Louis Gerstner before he retired as CEO of IBM. I was even a judge at Corel's annual computer art competition in Ottawa a few years back.

At a more mundane level, I have extensive contacts at market and product manager level, and with all sorts of press offices and external PR agencies.

And I'm far from the only one on HEXUS that does.

I have no idea of the extent of damage at WD plants, because it's not my field, but it's a pretty good bet I or others here could find out if we asked.


But that really wasn't my point. If anyone's going to castigate new members for post count spamming, it's really a job for the mods, not least because we have access to information only available to mods. If someone that isn't doing that joins up and gets called names, it might well see them just leave. We do not want to deter new members, or to cost Scan potential sales and/or customers, and we do want to be open and welcoming to all, until they satisfy us that they don't deserve it.

So if you think someone's post-count spamming, please just tell a mod, or report the post. We'll then deal with it in a way agreed by the team. That's all I'm getting at.

[HEADRAT]

It takes a long time to setup a "clean room", when there were floods in Germany a few years back it caused chaos!

Even if the plant isn't actually physically damaged if the power fails then the "clean room" has to be setup again.

[ik9000]

It takes a long time to setup a "clean room", ... if the power fails then the "clean room" has to be setup again.

I'm using this excuse for the state of my bedroom! "Sorry it's just there's been a power cut you see..."

[NitrousX]

All i could suggest to all of you is if your in desperate need of a hdd look on ebay. This week i purchased a 2nd hand 1tb Samsung spinpoint f3 that was manufactured September this year.
Plus 3 years warranty for a nice price £81.50 including p&p. And it's in perfect condition it was last used previously in Raid & SSD setup. And yesterday i plunged the Win 7 OS onto it so far so good its running fine in a i5 2500k rig

[ristac]

Annoying that Samsung drives have shot up in price when they are nowhere near Thailand.

[Saracen]

Annoying that Samsung drives have shot up in price when they are nowhere near Thailand.

Supply and demand, though. There's a small number of suppliers, each with a small number of plants, and generally, those plants include 'one big so-and-so' and one or two much smaller ones. If the bog so-and-so gets taken offline for a major supplier for any period of time, you're going to find it's hard for the others to step up and fill that big a gap, in the short term.

Economies of scale are a good thing in that they drive down unit prices for us all, but a bad thing 'cos they leave us exposed to a kind-of oligopolistic effect, and it's manifesting in supply shortages.

[shaithis]

Economies of scale are a good thing in that they drive down unit prices for us all, but a bad thing 'cos they leave us exposed to a kind-of oligopolistic effect, and it's manifesting in supply shortages.

Are you 100% sure that's what is happening though? profiteering by suppliers is what I would chalk it up to personally......and that is based on how quickly prices went up - I do not believe every UK retailer re-stocked with the same ridiculously-priced shipments on the exact same day.

[Saracen]

Are you 100% sure that's what is happening though? profiteering by suppliers is what I would chalk it up to personally......and that is based on how quickly prices went up - I do not believe every UK retailer re-stocked with the same ridiculously-priced shipments on the exact same day.

100%? No. I can't be.

And I'd bet there is also an element of "profiteering", as you put it, as well. But what's the mix?

Put it this way, in a world of perfect competition, and more than adequate supply, demand sets price pretty closer to cost. It does that, self-evidently, because no supplier is a large enough part of the supply chain to affect price by altering supply. "Profiteering" cannot happen because if supplier 1 realises prices, customers will switch to supplier 2 through x.

But it's easy to slap that "profiteering" label on things, but arguably, harder to justify it.

Who is profiteering? Scan? If they were, all that would happen is we'd all be buying from eBuyer, or .... well, any number of others. And just because Scan have increased prices doesn't mean they;re profiteering. After all, we have no way to know what stock they had or what they're paying for it now. For all we know, margins are as tight as ever. Or not. Who knows.

The same argument can be used right back to the doors of Samsung, Hitachi, etc. Are they making more money from each unit? Probably. But I'd point out that these are companies that owe a legal duty to shareholders, and a central element of that is profit. They aren't charities or social enterprises providing a service or product at minimum possible price to consumers.

And few of us are.

Ever changed job for a higher salary? If yes, does that make you a profiteer? Because, after all, you have a product in limited supply (your time) and most people sell it at the maximum rate possible, consistent with other factors, like job satisfaction, hours required and location.

Put it this way. I'm self-employed, and I work, within similar criteria, for the highest bidder. Suppose you want a job done and offer £20/hour. The bloke next door wants the same job and offers £30 an hour. Guess which job I take, all other things being constant.

Suppose I decide to take a full-time permanent job. You offer £50k a year and we're near agreement. Then someone else comes along, all other factors being equivalent (location, hours, work type, etc) and offers £60k. Guess what? I sell my time in a way that gives me the most benefit. Wouldn't you?

But that's services, which is a bit different. So suppose I'm a manufacturer. I make decorative widgets. It takes me a certain amount of time per widget, so I can't easily increase production in the short term. In the longer term, I can take on someone to do the drudgery, maybe hire an accountant instead of doing the accounts myself, but meantime, I can produce 50 widgets a week. You offer me £15 per widget, for 500 widgets, and just as we're about to sign the deal, Fred offers me £20 per widget. Well, sorry pal, but £5/widget is £5/widget, and I owe it my the business owners (that being me) to maximise revenue.

It is, after all, supply and demand that sets price. Supply is, for the short term, fixed and price is stable.

So now suppose I've taken on an apprentice, trained them up and 'cos they don't have my experience, they can only produce 30 widgets a week. Unless demand exists, price is likely to drop. So suppose demand does exist and I can sell all 80/week. Now, my apprentice quits, or falls ill. I'm back to 50/week, but demand is 80/week. I will fulfil any existing orders and contracts, but after that, price is likely to go up, especially is demand is still there at the new price. But the time will come when people won't pay any more and supply and demand are stable again, with production at 50. When the apprentice comes back from his illness and production rises, I'll probably have to drop prices because I can't sell 80 at the higher price.

Of course, my customers can live without my decorative widgets. They can buy coloured doo-dads from my competitors, though I maintain my widgets are better than their doo-dads, of course. Or they can wait until my apprentice is back to work, and let people that really want widgets right now, even at the higher price, buy the stock.

So tell me, where does the normal operation of market forces stop, and profiteering start? And wouldn't you do the same? If you've got some old PC hardware for sale, do you not sell at or pretty near to market price? And that is, of course, exactly the same principle in operation.

[shaithis]

That's all well and good and most of us know all that....

But when you consider how tight-lipped every etailer has been on the subject and how certain news articles state things will be returning to normality "soon"....now add in the reduction to the amount of new PCs being built this year (and especially this Christmas) and you do wonder how there could be such a shortage.

Now look on Scan.....60GB SSD + 1TB HDD = £120. HDD on its own £100. SSD on its own £70.

You don't need to go through their accounts to figure out the drives they are selling for £100+ they bought for no more then ~45 - probably less, maybe even a lot less. Funny how they can sell them at pre-flood prices when bundled with an item that's harder to shift......

Massively inflated rip-off pricing over a scare. It isn't even a real shortage yet and may never be.

[Stringent]

Any idea when hard drives are gonna fall back to pre flood prices? Have they started dropping again yet?

[Beowulf1100]

Any idea when hard drives are gonna fall back to pre flood prices? Have they started dropping again yet?

People are speculating on forums around Feb - March time. I hope it's before.

I check the prices daily as I need two 1Tb WD Black Cav's for two builds over XMas.

[Saracen]

Any idea when hard drives are gonna fall back to pre flood prices? Have they started dropping again yet?

Some have certainly started easing off a bit, but not hugely.

I wouldn't necessarily read too much into that, though. It may be nothing more than that prices shot up so far, so fast, that they overshot the natural level a bit and have now stabilised. i.e. a bit of the panic has subsided and a calmer state re-merged.

[Beowulf1100]

I check the prices daily as I need two 1Tb WD Black Cav's for two builds over XMas.

Scan have these at £89.99 on Today only (today). Just right for me

[shaithis]

Scan have these at £89.99 on Today only (today). Just right for me

Wait. Seriously.

Other places are picking up the pace and I am sure prices will be dropping again over the next few weeks.

They cannot keep on selling old stock at +200% prices.