William Robb wrote: >From: "Digital Image Studio" >> And for a relatively small cost per body they could make the >>claim of effectively 100% backwards compatibility. > >The best info I have been able to glean is a manufacturing cost of >about US$35.00 per body sold. What that would do to the retail >price, and if the price increase would dissuade more people from >buying than the increase in compatability would persuade people >to buy is, of course, the real question. >Pentax seems to think they know what the answer is.
I've heard that they couldn't get anyone to make the assembly at all and I've heard the "$35.00 each" estimate, both from different but reliable sources. I've long wondered which was true and lately come to the conclusion that *both* are: The $35.00 price tag was probably the manufacturer's way of saying, "We don't want to make this &#$@ thing in the quantities Pentax needs so we're going to price the job such that they'll either decline it or end up paying us so much we don't care". Not an uncommon way of avoiding headaches. (I used to price web design jobs that way for customers who looked like problems to me.) The lack of any supplier willing to make the meter galvanometer was the final nail in the K100's coffin. They could of course have switched to some kind of LED display, but with other manufacturing costs of the camera going up, decided it wasn't worth the investment. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
