U S B Sticks

[Svejk]

Does anyone know what is inside them?
Why do some record 10 mins TV and some 32/64 hours.
^And, by extension, some cost as little as a £1(I'm guessing) and others cost £40/50.
^Yet all look exactly the same on the outside and, I think, weigh the same.

[fiction-factory]

They should have their storage capacity written on the packaging

[CrapAtCryptics]

They are basically solid state drives - the price differences are for bigger volume and whether you choose USB2/3. I got a 128gb USB3 for £28.

Ebuyer is consistently the cheapest.

[Tilly2]

It's all to do with the megabytes and gigabytes, innit?

[fiction-factory]

Sorry if that isn't what you were asking, Svejk

[RATTER15]

The price difference relates to storage capacity and quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCe9jwPIzDU

[Svejk]

^I get all the above, which is why I asked what is inside them.
If, as seems, they are all made out of the same ammount of plastic, why not make them all high capacity?

[Svejk]

^^^Or do they have some precious metal/diamond component?(very unlikely, I reckon)

[Dogsbody2]

The unit manufacturing cost of different memory capacity USBs is broadly the same, the manufacturers selling price is driven by recovering the huge development cost of getting successively smaller memory 'footprints' on the size of the semiconductor material inside the device.

That's why the price (per unit size of memory capacity) falls over time

[Tilly2]

Open up two and compare them, Svejk.

[Dogsbody2]

They have no high cost raw material inside them, and the plastic is only an outer covering.

[Svejk]

I'm not made of USB sticks, tilly.
I'm not sure the research costs cover what I'm getting at. The research doesn't stop a factory switching them all to the 'high capacity' line.

[TheChair]

Cars are all made of roughly the same amount of glass and metal. Maybe you should be asking why a 2 litre car costs more than a 1.5?

[-Talbot-]

What would they charge if every USB stick was say 128gb ... £28?

If it's only for a kid saving their homework on you wouldn't want to spend that amount. It has to be because of marketing.

[Svejk]

If all cars looked the same and cost the same to make, could they justify limiting the performance of one and charging ten times as much for the 'unlimited' one?

[Svejk]

But why £28, talbot, if they all cost the same to produce?

[Zacs-Master]

It's left in a consumerist economy Svejk. Most cars are made with all the wiring and software for top of the range models, they just don't fit the final switches / menus to be able to access them. A friend has just bought a 2nd hand Audi A6 and has had all the functions switched on by a technician (cornering spotlights / latest sat nav features etc etc).

[Zacs-Master]

Life, not left.

[Svejk]

Maybe they charge what they can get away with. It's a wonder the Chinese don't flood the market with cheap ones.

[Zacs-Master]

I think we've established that they're all cheap. We just get ripped off on an implied VFM scale which doesn't need to exist.

[TheChair]

A USB stick contains hardware and firmware interface controller, hardware and firmware for controlling and addressing the memory chips, and the memory chips themselves. Why are you convinced that the manufacturing cost is the same, regardless of speed and capacity?