Oliver,
I concur with your sentiments, but there are too many questions (or
arguments on the groups) asking how to hack the OS to make the hardware
work. After I sent the last response, I found some data I had been looking
for:
When I first started in the industry a long time ago, Data General
where I worked found:
Salary of an engineer < $20,000 / year
Hardware design costs 1 man year or $20,000
Driver costs 3-6 monts or $10,000 (remember the demands were less
back then)
Driver mainaince costs for the life of the product 6-12 months or
$20,000 (again things were simpler)
Price per board (for a common peripheral) $4000
Profit per board (for a common peripheral) $2000
or in other words you needed to sell 25 board to break even. At
that time the need to save build costs was extreme since it directly
impacted your profits.
Now:
Salary of an engineer $100,000 / year
Hardware design costs 6 months to a year or $100,000
Software costs 1 year or $100,000
Software maintaince costs for life of the product 100k per year for
3-5 years) $500,000
Price per board (for a common peripheral) $10
Profit per board (for a common peripheral) < $1
At this point saving on software maintaince becomes a very big
thing.
–
Don Burn (MVP, Windows DDK)
Windows 2k/XP/2k3 Filesystem and Driver Consulting
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“Oliver Schneider” wrote in message
news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> Don,
>
> this is fully understood. But it seems you separate soft- and hardware
> too
> strictly in this “selling phase”. IMO it is the case that only with a well
> written driver (let’s take graphics cards) you will get the most out of
> the
> hardware. Moreover when new software (e.g. games) is released you will try
> to optimize the performance of your graphics card (even for existing
> products - and optimization can only be done via software, may it be
> firmware or drivers). My point is, that the vendor wants his product to
> perform well. And the product is not just “the hardware” or “the
> software”,
> it’s a bundle. Especially after the initial release of such a product.
> They
> are selling products, not hardware and not software alone.
>
> But perhaps you have the better insight into this. So I’ll step back
>
> With best regards,
>
> Oliver
>
> –
> ---------------------------------------------------
> May the source be with you, stranger
>
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> URL: http://assarbad.net
>