I just read an interesting article. It says that printer makers are getting rich off of their proprietary ink cartriges and that if gas cost what ink does; it would take $175,000 to fill your tank. Now that is onehellofa business model.

It would probably only cost $99,000 to fill my small tank, lucky me. No wonder hp doesn't care much about us calculator users (ti, sharp and casio are even worse of course).

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-zay03.html

As Rush likes to point out, at $1 for a 16 ounce bottle, fancy water costs several times as much as gasoline.

Geez! You guys, thinking out of the box . . . You should watch where you put this stuff!

If someone from GM drops in, pretty soon we'll be buying gasoline, oil and transmission fluid in big, plastic cartridges, no two of which will be the same. ("Sorry, we're fresh out of Cruiser cartridges. But I have a Hummer-to-Cruiser converter with which you can buy three times your original capacity, but it'll have to sit in the passenger seat . . .")

Don't get these guys started!

Perhaps they should start selling "Computer Health Insurance." After all, some drug makers sell eye drops after glaucoma surgery for about $50 for a tiny bottle (worked out to roughly $20,000 per GALLON!). You could get a "prescription" for new toner, and the cost would be subsidized by everyone else. People would still bitch about the cost of ink, but they would only be paying a fraction of the actual "cost." Call your Congressional representatives.

Anybody know if they sell printer ink in Canada?

How about the fluoride rinse the dentist charges $20 a shot for? What really gets me is that a few years ago, he told me fluoride rinse after a cleaning was nothing compared to using fluoride toothpaste every day, then I guess some vendor or trade magazine article shook him up by showing him how he could mark up a cleaning by 20%!

Yup, I hear yuh, always thought the printer cartridges were a ripoff. Likd that specification of $175,000 to fill your gas tank.

Well, what can you do, its not about building an honest product to an honest price anymore ..... its about seeing who you can $crew and how badly.

Maybe I'll have to start thinking like that. Anybody want to buy a large bridge from me, it connects traffic to a major city .

:o)

Norm;

i'd never make it in business; i always thought the "$crew-er" and the "$crew-ee" ought to BOTH enjoy the "$crew-ing"

Check this out, it's a navigation calculator. i remember you expressed an interest in looking at them. If it wasn't for that dam "=" key i'd think of buying it myself.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3039400375&category=11713&rd=1

- d

Business practice is supposed to be a mutual
exchange in which both sides are better off for it
(I pour cement for your driveway, you pay me,
I wanted the money, you wanted the driveway
both sides are happy with the trade).

You mentioned both sides get $crewed but both
sides enjoy it......... that would still classify
as a win-win situation.

What I am seeing lately in business leaders is
an obsession with finding "win-lose" transactions.
They dont care what they are winning, just so the
other side is losing. They are happy selling buggy
whips instead of jet engines, just so long as
the customers pay too much and the vendors are going
broke. these types of business leaders would rather
shut the business down, than see a scenario where
everybody is making it.

True business leaders (gag, dare I mention Bill Gates?)
want a great many factions to come out winners, i.e.
the vendors and the employees are well-compensated.
But business leaders to be wary of are the ones that
dont care what the opportunity, the market, or the
customers are saying, just so long as they make
money and you go broke. Run for your life on those types.

***************

old navigation calculators may well be an
example where you really can't use it for much.

I'm thinking it has to be an item approved for
FAA exams, otherwise why bother learning its
idiosyncracies and getting familiar with it.

Therefore if it is no longer approved for an FAA
exam, whats the use.

That would point towards using the more recent
Jeppesen navigation calculator products.

Norm; i remembered that you were interested but it looks like i forgot why you were interested. It sure is a pretty unit though, isn't it? - and no, it isn't mine.

I'm just an armchair wanna be pilot, thats all.

I took quite a lot of flying lessons, then stopped
rather abruptly.

They say that the theoretical principle of flight is that

the air over the top of the wing flows more rapidly over

the top surface than the bottom surface, thereby generating lift.

But that is wrong. The actual principle of flight is that
the flow of money out of your wallet generates the lift caused by the wing.

However, the lift is only generated if the flow of money is very large. Otherwise the airplane does not fly.

Realizing all of this, I decided that I did not wish to have a flow of money that large so I have left the airplanes and the navigator computers temporarily out of reach for now.