Well I said I wasn't going to continue responding to this thread but I'm afraid that I can't just let this one go. I am certainly not a Freedom Scientific fan but I can assure you that it does cost something to write a screen reader. I don't know what their profit margin is but there is the cost of hiring programmers who don't work cheap. Not just one programmer but probably a dozen or so. Then there is the cost of all the people who answer the phone for tech support. Then there is the cost of marketing. For example to do a conference like CSUN, NFB, ACB it cost a company around $1,000 per 6 foot table plus extras such as electricity, chairs, table cloths and not to mention the salaries and travel expenses of the people who work the booth. Talk about a rip off I wish I could rent a six foot table for a thousand dollars a week! I'm sure you are right that they have duplicators to manufacturer the disk. However what about the people who run the machines. How about the shipping cost and the packing materials. How about the cost of paying someone to make the tape tutorials and duplicate the tapes. Anyway, I have also never been able to buy a copy of Windows for $19.00 I think the last copy of Windows XP I bought was around $200.00. The story is even worse for hardware manufactures. I can assure you that we don't mass produce Braille displays. Certainly not in the terms of other products. We run some components through an assembly line but our runs may be 100 units instead of 10,000 units for a product that sells to the general population. Many parts of the Elba are assembled by hand. It just has to be that way. The large assembly lines used by say toshiba certainly are more efficient but only because they produce such large numbers. It cost manufacturers tens of millions of dollars to build a plant like that. Once again the cost can be recovered if you sell a million copies of something. There are only around 900,000 blind people in the U.S. Out of those less than10% are Braille users. So if we sold an Elba to everyone who could use one, we would sellmaybe 80,000 units. We all know that we will never sell an Elba to everyone in the U.S. who could use one. If for no other reason than that there are many companies competing for this market. I do understand the frustration of not being able to afford these products. I've been blind all my life and I have had to work hard to scrape together the money for my technology too. I used to get very angry about the prices of technology. I guess I still do. However, now that I work in the field I understand that there really are issues that keep the prices high. All I ask is that you really think the issue through before you jump to the conclussion that we are all ripping you off. Tommy redhat.com]On Behalf Of Lorenzo Prince Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 5:22 PM To: blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Papermeier Braillex ELBA note taker Tom Masterson staggered into view and mumbled: > Remember that each braille cell in a display costs (last time I got a price) > There is a problem with the age supply and demand we > don't need enough parts to make manufaturing them cheap. So by the time you > add the cost of a case and the rest of the hardware not too mention the > labor for puting these together and other costs I don't think the companies > are making a huge proffit. Just a guess on my part. Actually, I can't believe for half a second that it's about supply and demand. The demand for these products is definitely out there, and, whether we like it or not, it's growing every day. Also, I do believe that these companies are making a very HUGE profit off of disabled peope. I am SURE that they mass-produce their products. Do you think even for a minute that someone actually sits down and makes a braille display from scratch by hand? I don't think so. Also, it is a little known fact that most of these companies have technology DONATED to them, which means they get it FREE. So I am sure that they are rolling in money. Well, for a non-hardware example, take a look at JAWS for Windows. The Windows operating system itself is $19. Just to make it talk costs another $1000. All this software does is use Microsoft-s accessibility technology which they allow Freedom Scientific to use Free to make the computer say what's on the screen, and the software is full of bugs that according to FS are "too hard to fix." Do you think even for a minute that the software costs $1000 a copy to make? Most definitely NOT. In fact, they offer this software to download as a demo off the internet, so it is definitely being mass-produced. And they have their own special software which can make mass copies of authorization disks, each with unique serial number keys. Actually, I think it's all the copy protection that they put into it that makes it cost so much. I guess they don't realize that if they simply lowered the price of the software that they wouldn't have to copy protect it, as people who need it would go ahead and buy it if it was less than $100 as it should be. Lorenzo Prince happy Red Hat 9 user ;) -- We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated. (seen in someone's .signature) _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list