It's a common marketing practice [LWN.net]

It's a common marketing practice

Posted Mar 31, 2008 10:11 UTC (Mon) by kbengston (subscriber, #6153)
In reply to: A creative example of the value of free drivers by ikm
Parent article: A creative example of the value of free drivers

There was a popular 80s multimeter brand that used the same internal circuit board for base
model and deluxe version. A single jumper enabled the upgrade. Of course the markings on the
outside of the case gave no clue that the extra features were available, but they were if you
knew. 

The manufacturer clearly thought that he could make a profit with either model, and that his
engineering costs would be minimised if the two used mostly identical hardware.  Was it legal
to enable the deluxe features that were dormant in the base model hardware that many paid for?
Most thought it was, though probably only a minority voided their warranty and actually did
it. The manufacturer had the good grace (and funds) to chalk it up to experience. He hasn't
repeated the mistake since.

(Log in to post comments)

It's a common marketing practice

Posted Mar 31, 2008 16:03 UTC (Mon) by mckay (subscriber, #2782) [Link]

A friend of mine told me that IBM did this with their 1130 minicomputers, back in the day. You
could purchase a "speed upgrade" that doubled the computer's speed. The "upgrade" consisted of
changing a jumper, which took a flip-flop out of the clock line.

It's a common marketing practice

Posted Apr 1, 2008 6:36 UTC (Tue) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

This is so common there's even a term for this: "mid-life kicker".  This applies both to doing
a product upgrade in middle of a product's lifespan (which is hardly controversial), and also,
I think, to the idea of "slugging" a product at launch and remove the "slug" for a fee when
doing the upgrade.

While this looks rather insane to some people, it is quite a sensible business practice - the
company can sell the initial product for a somewhat lower price maybe, and grow the market,
then release the faster/better product via upgrade without actually shipping new hardware to
existing customers.  Overall costs are lowered, and in a competitive market both the new and
old product should cost less than shipping an entirely "new" product.

Of course it does depend on customers not finding, or being unwilling to mess with, the
"slug"...

It's a common marketing practice

Posted Apr 2, 2008 2:46 UTC (Wed) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link]

IBM practiced this across their MVS mainframe range for many years. Their customers didn't feel too upset, as they were basically renting MIPS. At original sale IBM would ship bigger iron with some CPUs either clocked slow or disabled. Then the customer would pay more, a "screwdriver upgrade" would occur, and the customer would IPL (reboot) into a faster machine.

The benefit to the (typically banking and government) customer was simple. A mainframe "forklift upgrade" takes about two years of planning to minimise risk and disruption. An IPL takes about eight weeks of planning.

It's a common marketing practice

Posted Apr 4, 2008 0:46 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

These days, even turning a screwdriver is pretty expensive, so this kind of price discrimination is done with cryptographic keys -- you pay your money and the vendor emails you a key that brings the dormant or underutilized hardware to life.

Sometimes you can downgrade again later too.

It's a common marketing practice

Posted Mar 31, 2008 16:58 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

Usually, the base model doesn't use some of the lower-yield portions of the circuit that the
deluxe model uses, and they test boards and jumper only the ones that pass. Of course, then
their yield improves, and they need to take off the jumper to meet demand for the base model.
But there's often a reasonable chance that doing the upgrade on your own will reveal that the
thing won't actually work like that.

In any case, if the company is making a profit selling the deluxe hardware internals at the
base price, and this is able to compete with other manufacturers, having people find out that
they can turn the base model into the deluxe model is probably a net win. Of course, it's
usually not possible to make a profit making deluxe hardware and selling it at base model
prices.