Re: [tlug] Pre-installed linux?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@??>]

On Sun, 11 Feb 2007, "Lyle H Saxon" wrote

 > > > If you spend around Y15,000, you can get P-IV's running at around
 > > > 2GHz, some with USB 2.0.
 > >
 > > Are these kinds of prices specific to the Japanese market?

The American market is comparable for new hardware AFAIK.

What happens in the Japanese market is that the vendors push huge
quantities onto the captive local market of government and large
corporations at rather high margins.  Then anything left over gets
dumped (in the "violation of applicable international trade
agreements" sense) on the export and Akihabara markets, essentially
untaxed (Japan has a national 5% sales tax, which until recently was
added on a separate line instead of included in the price).  Europe
has very high taxes (most tax revenue comes from VAT, and I don't have
figures offhand but guesstimating from public sector share in GDP I
would guess that's got to be about 30-40% of the price on the street,
at least if your vendor is paying tax).

In the American market, again there's no VAT and with few exceptions
sales tax is low compared to VAT.

 > that for the monitor?)  Also keep in mind what fuels the flow of used
 > machines here - the computer leasing business.  Companies that lease
 > computers to other companies will get back a batch of computers (often
 > models that were only marketed to companies in the first place, and
 > not to the general public) that they are unable to re-lease to other
 > companies (who expect new machines with a new lease), so they sell
 > them in batches cheaply to companies that then market them in used
 > computer shops.

Yeah, the used car market works the same way.  But then, both markets
work the same way in the U.S.