Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> This somewhat implies that normal stuff is designed to be UNreliable. ;-)

Kind of, but not exactly.  It might be reliable, it might not be. 
Really it all comes down to luck - which, in the end, makes it unreliable :)

But it's not like a bunch of guys in suits sat down and said, "Now we 
need to design a version that's going to fail really soon."

> I'm just wondering whether they actually did anything different at all 
> for the extra money, that's all.

Yeah, they guaranteed that it won't fail within certain tolerances. 
Those tolerances are *much* stricter than for the cheap version.


> it'll take up to 15 days to arrive. But actually it arrives within 12 

> hours. And it still arrives within 12 hours. Do they actually do 
> anything different? Or is it just a tax on stupidity?

It's a guarantee.  Sure, you order something online and you could get it 
in 12 hours.  Or, you could get it in 2 weeks.  I've had both occur.

When you pay extra for shipping, you're paying for a guarantee that it 
will arrive within a certain timeframe.  If you're ordering a gift for 
someone's birthday, for instance, and their birthday is 3 days from now, 
do you want to gamble that the gift won't arrive on time?  Or do you 
want to know *for a fact* that it will arrive within 3 days?

> On the other hand, consider the printers example. Clearly something *is* 
> actually different, because the printers really do perform differently. 
> So in this case, you *are* getting something for your money.

As trite as the old saying is, "You get what you pay for".  A lot of the 
time, people decide that the quality really is worth the extra money 
(like your printer).  The trick is knowing when to pay for quality, and 
when to go cheap.

...Chambers

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