DS Forums

 
 

Memory card rip off


Reply
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 10-04-2012, 20:32
Paace
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 12,488

Why are memory cards so expensive compared to DVD's?

Memory Card 4Gb costs £14.99 in Tescos and Argos.

DVD/R 4GB costs 25p ie 25 for £5.95
Paace is offline   Reply With Quote
Please sign in or register to remove this advertisement.
Old 10-04-2012, 20:35
Gormond
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Scotland
Posts: 15,714
Memory cards are much more expensive to manufacture! It's as simple as that.
Gormond is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-04-2012, 22:03
iangrad
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 772
No I don't own this company , just used them for computer supplies

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Stora...roductId=40631

Bit cheaper than the one you mention !
iangrad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-04-2012, 22:59
grahamlthompson
Forum Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Redditch Worcs
Posts: 17,295
Why are memory cards so expensive compared to DVD's?

Memory Card 4Gb costs £14.99 in Tescos and Argos.

DVD/R 4GB costs 25p ie 25 for £5.95
You buy your DVD-R in the wrong place, Ritek dye printable ones cost about £16.00 for 1 hundred. They are mass produced in the millions by a process that probably costs a few pence each. The same as a commercial DVD costs.

You buy your memory cards in the wrong place as well, assuming SD 4GB cards.

A simple example

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000MX48V...hvptwo=&hvqmt=
grahamlthompson is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 07:10
alan1302
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: West Yorks
Posts: 6,180
Why are memory cards so expensive compared to DVD's?

Memory Card 4Gb costs £14.99 in Tescos and Argos.

DVD/R 4GB costs 25p ie 25 for £5.95
I suppose your next question will be why are SSD hard drives so much more expensive than normal ones?
alan1302 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 08:54
Nigel Goodwin
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: North Derbyshire
Posts: 41,794
I suppose your next question will be why are SSD hard drives so much more expensive than normal ones?
Or why cars cost more than bicycles.
Nigel Goodwin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 09:38
Fishface
Guest
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Posts: 675
Why are memory cards so expensive compared to DVD's?

Memory Card 4Gb costs £14.99 in Tescos and Argos.

DVD/R 4GB costs 25p ie 25 for £5.95
And you can get an entire pc dvd drive cheaper than that. Basic profiteering by memory card manufacturers due to high demand with digital cameras and all that.
Fishface is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 10:11
alanwarwic
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: the wild world web
Posts: 28,132
err no.

Supermarkets insist on 50% + profits for these type of items. It is also why they tend to stock lower end laptops.
alanwarwic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 10:47
flagpole
Inactive Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 43,524
Or why cars cost more than bicycles.
i have been wondering this myself.
flagpole is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 10:51
captainkremmen
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: DAVEVILLE, Daveshire DA1 1VE
Posts: 33,621
£14.99 for a standard 4Gb memory card?.

You've been done.
captainkremmen is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 10:57
Fowl Fax
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 3,680
You need to shop around a bit more.

My last 4GB memory card was £3.

My last tub of blank media was £10 for 100.
Fowl Fax is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 11:21
bobcar
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 14,718
Whilst it's understandable that a lot of people won't realise why a memory drive costs a lot more than a DVD/R to make what is surprising is that despite their understandable ignorance they feel they know enough to claim it is a rip-off.

It seems to be a general malaise nowadays that so many people pontificate on subjects about which they know nothing but expect their views to be as valid as those with knowledge. A perfect example of this would be the climate change debate with all sorts of self styled experts unified only in their ignorance and opinions based upon what they want to be true.
bobcar is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 13:42
c4rv
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Essex
Posts: 16,218
err no.

Supermarkets insist on 50% + profits for these type of items. It is also why they tend to stock lower end laptops.
50% ? try 500%. You are paying for convenience. If you have the time then order online.

As for comparing memory card to DVD-R, as several people have pointed out two completely different technologies.
c4rv is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 14:41
Glawster2002
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Nailsworth, Gloucestershire
Posts: 10,407
Why are memory cards so expensive compared to DVD's?

Memory Card 4Gb costs £14.99 in Tescos and Argos.

DVD/R 4GB costs 25p ie 25 for £5.95
If it is SD Memory Card then you have been done.

The last memory card I purchased was a 16GB Memory Card and that cost @ £15.50!!!

SanDisk Secure Digital High Capacity Card Extreme Video HD 16GB
Glawster2002 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 15:08
cbram1970
Guest
 
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 398
Maybe for £14.99 he got a Tesco Finest memory card, which was matured in a warehouse for 21 days
cbram1970 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 21:04
Orbitalzone
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Sussex
Posts: 12,173
The two things are not the same, the DVD blank disc is a sheet of plastic with some dye coated on it, the memory stick contains a memory chip(s) and circuit, chips are fabricated and no doubt more costly, require more materials and time to make and so there's more to it than making a blank disc.

Obviously that's a very simplistic comparison but the two things are very different despite essentially doing the same job.

I'd also argue that all memory is cheap as chips compared to a few years ago.

smart arses feel free to eleborate.
Orbitalzone is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2012, 23:30
grahamlthompson
Forum Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Redditch Worcs
Posts: 17,295
The two things are not the same, the DVD blank disc is a sheet of plastic with some dye coated on it, the memory stick contains a memory chip(s) and circuit, chips are fabricated and no doubt more costly, require more materials and time to make and so there's more to it than making a blank disc.

Obviously that's a very simplistic comparison but the two things are very different despite essentially doing the same job.

I'd also argue that all memory is cheap as chips compared to a few years ago.

smart arses feel free to eleborate.
I remember expanding a 16K TRS80 to a fantastic 32K which involved soldering on an extra 16K dynamic RAM chip which costs around £100.00. In modern terms I can't imagine what that relates to.

That's 62500 smaller than 1GB. so the same memory would have cost £6,250,000 thats without inflation :eek today. :

Hard Discs are the same. Look at the cost of a CD writer when they first came out (again around a £100.00). Now may be £10.00 - £15.00 pounds for the same performance.
grahamlthompson is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-04-2012, 09:29
Gormond
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Scotland
Posts: 15,714
I remember expanding a 16K TRS80 to a fantastic 32K which involved soldering on an extra 16K dynamic RAM chip which costs around £100.00. In modern terms I can't imagine what that relates to.

That's 62500 smaller than 1GB. so the same memory would have cost £6,250,000 thats without inflation :eek today. :

Hard Discs are the same. Look at the cost of a CD writer when they first came out (again around a £100.00). Now may be £10.00 - £15.00 pounds for the same performance.
My first CD writer was about £200 if I remember currently and used SCSI. It was also really slow about 4x compared to 52x of today's drives.
Gormond is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-04-2012, 13:07
webbie
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: North Devon
Posts: 1,568
My first computer with a cd drive was in 1995 just before windows 95 was released. The cd drive was £200. Some plugged into the sound card not the motherboard. Sound cards had a variety of interfaces to suit the various types of cd drive available at the time. Then cd drives with standard ata interfaces arrived. 8MB of ram was also £200. You needed 16MB or more to run Quake if I remember corrredctly. I added a 1GB hard drive later that year which also cost £200.
I have a photography mag from 1999 where 1GB compact flash cards are over £1,000.
webbie is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-04-2012, 21:26
Orbitalzone
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Sussex
Posts: 12,173
Yes, my first PC CDrom drive read discs at a maximum x2 speed and was read only..... and the drive cost about £130 in 1995

We don't know how lucky we are to get such powerful devices for such little money these days!
Orbitalzone is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-04-2012, 15:57
Paace
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 12,488
Goodness me with have some right smart arses on here who seem to take delight in mocking people for asking a simple question.

Most people who buy sd memory cards and DVDs are not geeks like a lot sem to be on here and buy their electronic goods from the nearest stores.
Paace is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-04-2012, 20:55
Orbitalzone
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Sussex
Posts: 12,173
Every forum online has smart arses, anyway hopefully some of the replies might have been of use to make it clearer why a blank disc costs a lot less than a memory card.
Orbitalzone is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13-04-2012, 21:08
alan1302
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: West Yorks
Posts: 6,180
Goodness me with have some right smart arses on here who seem to take delight in mocking people for asking a simple question.

Most people who buy sd memory cards and DVDs are not geeks like a lot sem to be on here and buy their electronic goods from the nearest stores.
We also have people on here who say something is a rip off even though though don't know the first thing about what is is they are talking about.
alan1302 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 14-04-2012, 01:11
webbie
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: North Devon
Posts: 1,568
It may have seemed like a simple question to you, but the fact is there is a huge difference between a memory card and a blank disc even if they have the same amount of memory. A memory card contains electronic components and a circuit board. A blank disc is a piece of plastic coated with a thin layer of dye. We are not trying to be smart arses but we know what we're talking about. That is why you post questions in a forum - to get replies from people who know more than you do.
webbie is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 14-04-2012, 09:22
bobcar
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 14,718
Goodness me with have some right smart arses on here who seem to take delight in mocking people for asking a simple question.

Most people who buy sd memory cards and DVDs are not geeks like a lot sem to be on here and buy their electronic goods from the nearest stores.
The point was the thread was titled "Memory card rip off" so the OP has jumped in saying it's a rip off based upon ignorance.

Being ignorant is not wrong however claiming something (the rip off) based upon ignorance is, this attitude is a major problem in our society. If they had just said "why are memory cards so expensive compared to DVDs" there would have been no problems.
bobcar is offline   Reply With Quote
 
Reply




 
Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 17:07.