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Message
From: Erez Birenzwig<erez_birenzwig@y...>
Date: Sat May 15 00:57:59 CEST 2004
Subject: [oc] One issue about free hardware
> On Sat, May 15, 2004 at 08:52:40AM +1200, Erez Birenzwig wrote:
> > The second part to this is that you have to buy a development board,
which
> > usually
> > cost some money, which is exactly the money most people don't want to
spend.
> > And if you want to actually use it for something, you'll have to buy
another
> > one,
> > and so on. You can't just keep the result on the hard drive and use it
when
> > you feel like it.
> >
>
> Devel boards are getting cheaper, into the range affordable to university
> students and hobbyists.
>
> Please excuse the url wrapping:
>
http://www.em.avnet.com/evk/home/0,1719,RID%253D0%2526CID%253D7816%2526CCD%253DUSA%2526SID%253D4746%2526DID%253DDF2%2526SRT%253D1%2526LID%253D4746%2526PVW%253D%2526BID%253DDF2%2526CTP%253DEVK,00.html
>
> $499 USD for a board with 1.5M gates, PCI connector, VGA hardware, etc.
US$499, might seem cheap if you're a hardware engineer working in the
silicon valay, but
for the avarage person it is still a lot of money. You can buy a whole new
computer for this
price, and the software comes for free....
I think that the price tag makes the hardware development comunity smaller,
and also indifferent
to the price tag of the accompaning software. It's an expensive business,
and there's a lot of money and profit in it.
Software on the other hand is a lot cheaper, and unless you're Microsoft,
there's not a lot of profit in it.
Erez.
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