[CUBE] Slot Load DVD-RW Drives From MCE

[Rick Rodman]

Well, when I had my Powerbook open (dvd drive), the drive looked the same
size to me as the drive in the cube, which is very thin considering the
space available.  My guess is that these are very similar drives, if not
almost identical.  I doubt any sheet metal will be required.  We may,
however, need some kind of connector adapter.  Maybe it would be a standard
'notebook ATA adapter'?

At any rate, if anyone is going to produce these, I would buy one at $300
unhesitatingly.  At $400 I'd be hesitant.

> If I am not mistaken there are about 250,000 Cubes in use today. Is
> that about right fellow list members?
>
> 5% sell through would be 12,500 units. At a $100 net profit that's
> $1,250,000. Looks like real money to me even with that very
> conservative small part of the base. So there's no reason to price
> these drives at a level at which less than 1% of the base would bite.

Not sure they're all on the list; some advertising would be necessary.

> On Sunday, January 19, 2003, at 10:53  AM, mentholiptus wrote:
>
> > I wouldn't BAN you even though you just took a half educated personal
> > stab at me...out of anger for not agreeing with what I said....just
> > like what you're protesting in the exact same email.

I didn't take a stab at anyone.  Actually (I think you're referring to the
slide-handle issue) I think you documented your trouble better than most
end-users would.  I was meaning more generally.  In any sale to end-users
you have to expect that some percentage is going to have trouble with the
procedure.  We certainly can't expect 12,500 users to do their own
installation.  Altho a drive installation should be a lot easier than a CPU
upgrade, I still think it might be beyond the skill level of most Cube
owners.  I wonder how Powerlogix and Sonnet deal with that...

I segued into netiquette out of irritation over the 'they're different
sizes/no they're not' and 'icommune' threads, both of which descended into
personal sniping and continued far more longer than they should have.  (It
looks like I've weighed in on the former dispute, unfortunately. But doesn't
it make sense for Apple to use at least similar drives in their various
computers? And the drive in the cube is really thin, considering all the
space available.)