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The Sweet Spot - computer buying the smart way



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Prices are in Canadian Dollars, and are subject to change without notice. please Email to confirm price before ordering. GST is extra in Canada, GST & PST are extra in BC & QC, HST in NB, NS & NF.

Use the SECURE ORDER FORM. or fax order form to (250) 385-6267 or call 1-877-320-0225. Make sure to include the make and model of your machine, your full shippping address, phone number, correct email address, the number, expiry date and name on your credit card plus the card billing address and phone if different from shipping address. Payment accepted by VISA or Mastercard or Canadian bank Interac Email Transfer. It must be your credit card and the card billing address and shipping addresses must match. For your protection, we may ask for additional proof of ID to be faxed. Third-party address shipments require faxed confirmation. PayPal accepted with a +3% service charge.

Gov't, Education and Corporate PO's accepted on prior approval of credit only. Download the Credit Application form and fax to (250) 385-6267

Shipping & handling: $9.95 anywhere in Canada regardless of quantity ordered Most in-stock orders will ship out by noon the next business day for 1-5 day arrival. Special orders may take 5-14 days. Shipping is via Xpress Post FedEx or Purolator at our choice. No PO Boxes for Purolator or FedEx. Please ensure that there is someone at the address during business hours to sign for the package. We do not guarantee delivery time. Shipping time and cost may be higher in NT, NU, YT or remote areas as defined by the courier . An invoice copy will be sent by email.

Shipping is at buyer's risk, Shipping insurance is optional at 1.5% extra on the goods value or by quote. Signature required for insured parcels.

Installation:
Goods are sold under the assumption that you have experience installing in your particular machine. RAM Installation instructions for your specific machine are not included. Refer to your owner's manual or manufacturer's Web site. If you are not confident, please take your machine to a technician for installation. Backup your data before doing any modifications to a machine. We are not responsible for any damage occuring during or after installation of products, nor any incidental or consequential damage or data loss.

Outside of Canada or the USA? We generally sell to North American addresses only. Please Email for shipping costs.
Due to excessive fraud, we do not respond to any commuications from: Indonesia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Nigeria and certain other countries.


We only sell new, fully warranteed premium quality goods. Full manufacturers' warranty terms apply. Customer is responsible for shipping.

We do not sell used memory, "pulls", remanufactured modules, "B" stock, gray-market goods or rejects. We do not take trade-ins of used memory. Warranty replacement only, no return for refund on: Kingston Memory, special order goods or software. Returns by prior approval only, shipping is not refundable, restocking charge may apply. Read the Terms and conditions of sale.


Use our SECURE ORDER FORM
or
FAX to (250) 385-6267
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Tollfree 877-320-0225

Quill Services Ltd. - Business Technology Consulting

(August 8 2003) Any tennis player knows there is one specific area on their racquet that gives the best control and power - this is the "sweet spot". Hitting the ball with other areas will work, just not with optimum efficiency.

The Sweet Spot in computing is the position in a product line or category which gives the best balance of performance and price. In fact, most industries have Sweet Spots, especially if they are technology driven, with constant introduction of new, better products, and a lowering trend in prices. Photography, home entertainment, and power tools are good examples of industries with definite sweet spots.

The Sweet Spot is seldom at the leading edge of technology - newly introduced products tend to have a disproportionately high cost, and a high rate of failure compared to more mature products. Early adopters, those people who must have the latest thing, pay top dollar and take the risk of de-bugging high end products for the rest of us. It's not called the "bleeding edge" for nothing.

The smart purchaser will look at products just behind the crest of the wave, usually at 75 - 90% of the performance of the latest, greatest units, but often at as much as 50% off the high-end price.

Of course, personal preference plays a role here. If you play three-dimensional computer games, and getting 10 more frames per second out of Quake or Doom at full anti-aliasing, full ansiotropic filtering and high screen resolution is critical for you, the extra $300 for a top-end video card is where your personal sweet spot will be.

The trick is not to get caught in the marketing hype, but to know where your value really comes from. Then put your money where you get the most return.

Some examples:

Hard drives - the sweet spot is now (and has been for some time) just around $200.00. In 2002 that got you an 80 Gb 7200 RPM IDE hard drive with a 2 Gb on-board cache. Today, the $200 Sweet Spot is a 120 Gb 7200 RPM IDE hard drive with an 8 Mb on-board cache and fluid bearings (for low noise). This means that both performance and capacity have improved for the same price. In six months, I suspect the $200 Sweet Spot will get you a 160 Gb drive.

If we plot a graph of performance vs. dollars and capacity vs. dollars, we're looking for the point of maximum performance/capacity, just before the pricing curve angles sharply up.

Serial ATA hard drives are a hot item right now - they offer a minor improvement in speed, but cost 15% - 25% more per Gb. They are leading edge today, and in short supply, so they command a premium price. If you can defer a purchase 3 - 6 months, you'll see the market mature some and the SATA pricing will stabilize at a lower level.

Memory - The sweet spot for most types of memory is the 512Mb RAM module. 1 Gb modules are available, but still overpriced. In the case of memory, we are faced with two constraints

1) The way operating systems and programs are developed, more memory (up to 1 Gb) is almost always better

2) There are limits imposed by the computer - only a limited number of slots you can put memory in, and the machine may be restricted in the size of module it can recognize.

Laptops, for example, commonly have two slots. If you were to fill your laptop with two 256 Mb modules, when it came time to upgrade, you would have to remove and dispose of one or both of the 256's to make room for 512's. Better to have started with the highest density module in the first place. Laptop memory isn't on the chart below, because the 1 Gb modules were literally off the scale ($1,400 - $1,800).

(Also, if you are buying a new machine, do check memory prices with us before placing the order - our lifetime warranty RAM is usually much more cost-effective than the manufacturers')

Real life example - we have recently built a PC for our internal use for database and music applications. These can be processor intensive, so we wanted a near-top end performance without the top end price. Here's a table comparing the top end choices with the Sweet Spot choices we made:

Item

Sweet Spot Model

Sweet Spot Cost Top-end Model Top-end Cost
Processor Pentium 4 2.4C 800 MHz Front side bus $300 Pentium 4 3.06C 800 MHz FSB $690
Motherboard MSI Neo2 LS 865PE $170 Asus AGP8X 875P $305
Video Card Powercolor Radeon 9600 Pro 128 Mb $250 Gigabyte Radeon 9800 Pro 128 Mb $590
Case Antec Sonata 380W $175 Antec Sonata 380W $175
Memory Transcend DDR400 1 Gb $292 Corsair DDR400 1 Gb $476
Hard Drive Seagate 120 Gb IDE 8 Mb cache $179 Seagate 120 Gb SATA 8 Mb cache $238
DVD-RW Pioneer A05 DVD-RW $315 Sony DRU510A DVD-RW+RW $520
TOTAL   $1681   $2994
Savings   44%    

We are indeed giving up about 20% in performance, but at a 44% savings. And that performance loss will only be apparent at the highest workloads; about 98% of the time we'll never see the deficit. We're not concerned about graphic performance for our particular applications, but the Radeon 9600 Pro will do very well for occasional gaming and can drive two monitors simultaneously. Motherboards with the Intel 865PE chipset are proving to be almost as fast as those with the more expensive 875 chipset. One thing that we didn't make any compromise on is the case: the Antec Sonata case is built specifically for quiet operation, as are the Seagate Barracuda V hard drives.

This is what we do - we know the computer industry, and we can help you place your computer and upgrade purchases squarely into the Sweet Spot, to make best use of your money. Call us for a consultation.

Trevor Inkpen
President, Quill Services Ltd.

Call Trevor Inkpen at Quill Services Ltd. for business technology consulting. (250) 382-6227
We help you make sense of technology.

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We feature Kingston, Crucial, Certified, Techworks, Buffalo and Corsair memory: We also offer guaranteed generic RAM - please Email for a quote.

We only sell new, fully warranted premium-quality RAM that meets or exceeds manufacturers' specifications and that has been tested for compatibility. Full RAM manufacturers' warranty terms apply. We do not sell used memory, "pulls", remanufactured modules, "B" stock or rejects. Read the Terms and conditions of sale.

Availability and price can change without notice. Email for up to date prices

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