A few months back I hit upon an idea for a rather laborious scheme that would make me not that much money: Selling hard drive magnets on Ebay.
There were approximately 50 or so old hard drives at work, and when I say old, I do mean old. None of them could accommodate more than 18.6 GB of storage with an Ultra2 Wide SCSI interface.
Nobody wanted to take the time to dispose of them properly, which included the unenvious tasks of filling all the paper work or indeed running the disks through the data erasure program. I figured if the disks were not working nobody had to worry about this.
I set about taking apart the first disk and I hit my first road block: Torx headed screws. I had never had the need to use a Torx screwdriver so I decided to go out and buy a set of Torx screwdrivers.
I did a bit of research online and I wasn't surprised to find such a large disparity in prices: from as low as a few pounds to around one hundred pounds. I was sure that I didn't need to spend £100 on a set of Torx screwdrivers, but how low should I go?
As is my wont, I procrastinated and resolved to do more research on the topic. However, that weekend I stumbled upon a set of Torx screwdrivers at a discount store for £2.99, so I thought that I might as well buy them there and then.
I was fully aware that at this price the quality of the set would leave a lot to be desired but still I managed to suppress this knowledge long enough for me to dismantle 1.5 hard drives, which is when I hit the quality limit of my £2.99 set of Torx screwdrivers.
As I said above, I was not expecting them to last a lifetime and they were a spur of the moment, almost an impulse buy, so it wasn't unexpected, however this left me with a bit of a problem.
I know that if one buys the cheapest, in this day an age with a proliferation of peddlers of cheap junk, one gets poor quality, but is the converse true? In other words, does one get quality by buying expensive stuff? Perhaps more importantly, how much should I have spent on the set given the used I was planning to give it?
It is very easy to determine the quality of items at the bottom of the price scale: They are rubbish, but one does know what one is paying for. However, once we leave the safety of the cheaper items, then it becomes a lot harder to ascertain how much better something is or put another way Do you know what you are paying for when you buy an expensive item?
Take the Apple iPod shuffle, which can be obtained for £35 from Amazon. Storage capacity is 2 GB, it has no screen, it's tiny and has some sort of clip mechanism. For a similar price, £36, it is possible to buy a Sansa Clip+ with 8GB of storage, an expansion slot, screen, FM radio and also a clip mechanism. Yes, it's slightly bigger but hardly noticeable and voice commands can be added with RockBox firmware, so are you sacrificing 6 GB of storage for voice command?
The reality is that to a great extent you are paying for the Apple brand, with its design and quasi-religious following, which means that if you don't really care about design and don't think much of Apple as brand then you would be wasting money by going down the iPod shuffle route.
Is there are a similar quasi-religious following for say Stanley tools?, I would rather imagine that this unlikely to be the case. In fact, from talking to some of my relatives, who work or have worked in construction, they seem to buy tools from different brands mostly through experience. In other words, they tend to favour a brand because it was worked for them in the past and negative experience have a much more lasting effect that positive ones:
Whenever I find myself thinking about quality, I always imagine myself going back to that Arcadia of the consumer on the days prior to consumerism, whenever they happen to have occurred. In reality I have to admit that there have always been different quality levels on the products available to the consumer and while the bewildering price ranges that can be found for most products these days, makes buying the right item really tricky and by the right item I mean an item whose quality is commensurate with the price paid, it is simply naive to think that it easier through choice.
It was only easier because there was no choice, in other words, if you were a worker you could just afford the cheapest stuff and that is what you bought. It's only a modern dilemma that we have this paradox of choice, which makes discerning how much of your money goes on quality and how much goes on to pay for the brand premium almost impossible.
To a certain extent this is ameliorated by the various product reviews, but product reviews are no panacea as it is just as likely that the service is reviewed, which can be helpful, but it's hardly relevant to the product's quality or lack thereof. Furthermore, a large number of reviews describe personal preference and are normally added very early on, i.e. when no issues are found or the product was found to be defective, so they tend to be very Manichean.
There are dedicated people who seem to take reviewing very seriously, a sort of amateur Which? (Consumer Reports if you are in the US) but sadly they are, very much, the minority and if you're not contemplating buying something that they have already bought, then you are out of luck.
So what to do?
As I said above, I was not expecting them to last a lifetime and they were a spur of the moment, almost an impulse buy, so it wasn't unexpected, however this left me with a bit of a problem.
I know that if one buys the cheapest, in this day an age with a proliferation of peddlers of cheap junk, one gets poor quality, but is the converse true? In other words, does one get quality by buying expensive stuff? Perhaps more importantly, how much should I have spent on the set given the used I was planning to give it?
It is very easy to determine the quality of items at the bottom of the price scale: They are rubbish, but one does know what one is paying for. However, once we leave the safety of the cheaper items, then it becomes a lot harder to ascertain how much better something is or put another way Do you know what you are paying for when you buy an expensive item?
Take the Apple iPod shuffle, which can be obtained for £35 from Amazon. Storage capacity is 2 GB, it has no screen, it's tiny and has some sort of clip mechanism. For a similar price, £36, it is possible to buy a Sansa Clip+ with 8GB of storage, an expansion slot, screen, FM radio and also a clip mechanism. Yes, it's slightly bigger but hardly noticeable and voice commands can be added with RockBox firmware, so are you sacrificing 6 GB of storage for voice command?
The reality is that to a great extent you are paying for the Apple brand, with its design and quasi-religious following, which means that if you don't really care about design and don't think much of Apple as brand then you would be wasting money by going down the iPod shuffle route.
Is there are a similar quasi-religious following for say Stanley tools?, I would rather imagine that this unlikely to be the case. In fact, from talking to some of my relatives, who work or have worked in construction, they seem to buy tools from different brands mostly through experience. In other words, they tend to favour a brand because it was worked for them in the past and negative experience have a much more lasting effect that positive ones:
I spent loads of money on a expensive diamond tipped drill bit set from Black & Decker and it was rubbish. Since then I've always gone with Bosch drill bit sets and power tools.In truth it might have been the other way round, the point still stands though, a negative experience is a lot more likely to be remembered, than a positive one as the positive one, this case, simply means having a reliable tool every day for a long time.
Whenever I find myself thinking about quality, I always imagine myself going back to that Arcadia of the consumer on the days prior to consumerism, whenever they happen to have occurred. In reality I have to admit that there have always been different quality levels on the products available to the consumer and while the bewildering price ranges that can be found for most products these days, makes buying the right item really tricky and by the right item I mean an item whose quality is commensurate with the price paid, it is simply naive to think that it easier through choice.
It was only easier because there was no choice, in other words, if you were a worker you could just afford the cheapest stuff and that is what you bought. It's only a modern dilemma that we have this paradox of choice, which makes discerning how much of your money goes on quality and how much goes on to pay for the brand premium almost impossible.
To a certain extent this is ameliorated by the various product reviews, but product reviews are no panacea as it is just as likely that the service is reviewed, which can be helpful, but it's hardly relevant to the product's quality or lack thereof. Furthermore, a large number of reviews describe personal preference and are normally added very early on, i.e. when no issues are found or the product was found to be defective, so they tend to be very Manichean.
There are dedicated people who seem to take reviewing very seriously, a sort of amateur Which? (Consumer Reports if you are in the US) but sadly they are, very much, the minority and if you're not contemplating buying something that they have already bought, then you are out of luck.
So what to do?
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